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THE ROOTS OF REALITY 



THE 

ROOTS OF REALITY 

BEING SUGGESTIONS FOR A 
PHILOSOPHICAL RECONSTRUCTION 



BY 

ERNEST BELFORT BAX 

BARRISTER-AT-LAW * 

AUTHOR OF " A MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY' 
"THE PROBLEM OF REALITY," ETC. ETC. 



NEW YORK 
B. W. DODGE & COMPANY 

1908 




3333 
• 33 



Printed in the United Kingdom by 

Ballantyne, Hanson 6* Co. 

Edinburgh 



Gift 
Publisher 

? ftfr'08 



TO 

JEAN JAURES 

LEADER OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF FRANCE, EX -VICE- 
PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH CHAMBER, LATE 
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AT THE 
UNIVERSITY OF TOULOUSE, 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 

IN RECOGNITION OF MANY-SIDED GENIUS AND STRIK- 
ING PERSONALITY COMBINED WITH 
SINGLE-MINDED INTEGRITY 
IN PUBLIC LIFE. 



PREFACE 

In the following pages the author, starting from 
certain postulates, founded in the consistency of 
consciousness itself, seeks to rough-hew some 
outlines indicating the leading . directions such 
as it appears to him any future philosophic con- 
struction is bound to take (or, if this be disputed, 
let us say, at least to take account of) if it aspires 
to be even relatively adequate to the needs of the 
up-to-date philosophic mind. The general basis 
in question is here found uncompromisingly in 
that of modern philosophical Idealism, though 
not perhaps in the form in which it has loomed 
largest in modern philosophic thought, or indeed, 
precisely in any form in which it has been 
hitherto presented. On the contrary, what to 
the author seems a more adequate formulation 
is suggested in accordance with which the 
leading problems in the chief departments of 
Experience are sketched out. 

The author is aware of certain shortcomings 
(real or apparent) that the * critic may find in 
the present book. These may be summed up 
generally as (i) the going over, here and there, 
however briefly, for the purposes of the argument, 



x PREFACE 

of ground familiar to the Fachmann; and (2) a 
certain amount of repetition in places, arising 
from a desire to emphasise and drive home with 
unmistakable clearness leading positions. These 
shortcomings, if they be such, the author regards 
as necessitated by his purpose of reaching the 
average intelligent man who is now beginning to 
interest himself in speculative problems, no less 
than the professional " thinker." 

For the rest, he begs one favour of the reader, 
whether critic or otherwise, and that is that if he 
tackles the book at all, he will suspend his judg- 
ment until he has gone through the whole of it. 
This, which in fairness always behoves in dealing 
with a work involving a connected argument, is 
especially necessary in the present case, where 
owing to the character of the exposition, objec- 
tions which might be raised against propositions 
as stated in one place will often be found dealt 
with in another. 

In conclusion it may be mentioned that certain 
of the positions here elaborated were stated in an 
incomplete and very brief form in a little book 
published many years ago by the author, entitled 
"The Problem of Reality," and now long since 
out of print. 



CONTENTS 



Preface 

Introduction .... 
I. The Problem of Consciousness 
II. Modern Idealism . 

III. The Alogical and the Logical 

mate Elements . 

IV. The Individual Consciousness . 
V. Reality and Truth 

VI. The Higher Consciousness . 
VII. The Final Goal of all Things 
VIII. Problems of Metaphysic 

IX. Survey of Results 

INDEX 



as 



Ulti- 



PAGE 

ix 

I 

IO 

39 

58 
104 

143 

174 
206 

254 
287 

323 



INTRODUCTION 

The restlessness of formulation so characteristic 
of .modern thought is even more noticeable in 
metaphysic than in other less abstract depart- 
ments of knowledge. Negative criticism has a 
peculiar tendency to run amuck amongst the more 
fundamental problems of philosophy. Every 
university man entering upon his career, profes- 
sional, pedagogic, or otherwise, whose bent leads 
him into the fields of speculative thought, seems 
to think it necessary to show his quality by 
starting a tilt at well-nigh every established 
position in speculation and scuttling Criticism 

it completely — in his own estimation versus 

1 rr r i i • • construe- 

at least. Unfortunately, the positive tj ve 

result of all the apparatus of criticism thought. 

he brings to bear upon his subject is generally 

exiguous in the extreme, recalling the relative 

proportions of bread and sack in the well-known 

quotation. It is comparatively easy nowadays 

to snatch a measure of success as a critic, not so 

as a constructive thinker. 

Let us take in review the main philosophical 

attitudes that have prevailed within the memory 



2 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

of the present generation. 1 Empiricism, now 
better known as the theory of the " Associational " 
school, was the dominant attitude in the 'fifties 
and 'sixties in this country and, to a large extent, 
on the Continent of Europe. This theory, the 
national output par excellence of British specula- 
tion from its origin in Hobbes and Locke and its 
working out by the Scottish Psychological School, 
takes sense-perception as an irreducible basis, and 
the mind (in a psychological sense) as the mere 
Historical rece i ver an d co-ordinator, through its 
sketch. function of thought, of the ready-made 
Empiricism, impressions or, more correctly, percep- 
tions received through the special senses. The 
peculiar advantage of the theory is its plausible 
appearance of irrefutability and of accordance 
with sound common-sense. A more thorough- 
going analysis discloses the fact, however, that 
the theory of Empiricism really evades the main 
problems of philosophy, that its postulates are 
not ultimate in themselves, but presuppose con- 
ditions not recognised in the empiricist theory, 
that its truth, such as it is, is somewhat of the 
nature of platitude, and that the truth claimed 
for it by some of its exponents is not truth at all, 
but fallacy. It is now beginning to be fairly well 
acknowledged that Empiricism, historically con- 
sidered, is a one-sided pendant to the equally 

1 I must apologise to the reader versed in the matter for even 
this brief survey which follows of ground to him familiar and trite 
enough, 



INTRODUCTION 3 

one-sided Dogmatism of the earlier Continental 
schools, arising directly out of the systems of 
Descartes and Leibnitz, and indirectly also out 
of the scholastic tradition of Nominalism. Pure 
philosophic Empiricism however, which was in 
itself mainly a psychological doctrine, had two 
important offshoots in what we may term popular 
philosophy, viz. eighteenth-century Materialism, 
and nineteenth-century Agnosticism. I regard 
the latter, at least in its prevalent form, as an 
offshoot of British Empiricism, although I am 
well aware that a case may be made out for re- 
garding it as a more direct descendant of the 
critical philosophy of Kant. We must not forget 
in this connection the important part that British 
Empiricism on certain of its sides played in the 
Kantian system. 

According to Empiricism, there exists an ex- 
ternal world of matter in space in the form of 
" a sort of a something," e.g. the so-called primary 
qualities of matter. Over against this is the 
mind, which apprehends and comprehends the 
world of objects by means of its sensory con- 
sciousness, of which the specific senses constitute 
the organ, although the external world in itself 
is not usually held by the empiricist to be the 
same as the external world perceived by the 
mind through the senses. Locke and the earlier 
empiricists, while conceding that the so-called 
primary qualities of matter (extension, resistance, 
figure) inhere in the objects, credited the secondary 



4 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

qualities (colour, smell, taste, &c.) solely to the 
perceiving mind. Berkeley went a step farther 
and got rid of the primary qualities of matter as 
existing independently of the mind with his 
famous formula of " esse est percipi." Hume, on 
similar grounds, we need scarcely remind the 
reader, invalidated the claim of the soul or mind 
to an independent existence apart from the suc- 
cession of impressions and ideas, which, as he 
contended, the term alone denoted. Empiricism 
thus on this line resulted in idealist Scepticism. 
On another side, the Empiricism of Hobbes and 
Locke issued in the Materialism of the French 
school, chiefly through Condillac and Helvetius. 
Taking his stand on the sense-impression, Con- 
dillac maintained the thesis not only that the 
mind did not contribute anything separately to 
knowledge, but that all thought was simply sen- 
sation refined and transformed. Hence 
Sensation- . , . r . . . 

ism and knowledge comes from without, and 

Material- the sensibly perceived world is the 
fount and origin of all things psychical. 
Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensti 
fuerit. How this order of ideas developed into 
the systematic Materialism of d'Holbach and 
La Mettrie is obvious, though unnecessary to 
dwell upon in this place. But the crude Empiri- 
cism of Locke and his immediate followers was 
the foundation, in part at least, of yet another 
direction in philosophical method. Kant, taking 
up the problem at the point at which Hume had 



INTRODUCTION 5 

dropped it, drew the crucial distinction between 
consciousness-in-general, the consciousness that 
apprehends reality, and this consciousness as 
reproduced in reflection as the content of the 
individual mind. By his analysis of the condi- 
tions presupposed in the concrete consciousness, 
consciousness-in-general, as he termed it, which 
we call reality or the real world, and the par- 
ticular consciousness ascribed to the individual 
as such, Kant became the pioneer for modern 
times of an entirely new method of philosophical 
investigation. 

As is well known, starting from Hume, Kant 
stated the problem as to how Hume's " impressions 
and ideas," that is, certain of them, came to have 
a universal and necessary validity. He found 
that certain thought-forms or categories, acting 
through the sense-forms of space and time, trans- 
formed the raw material furnished by the senses 
into conscious experience or reality. Fichte, 
who got rid of the unknowable things-in-them- 
selves of Kant, exhibited the whole world- 
process as having its Alpha and Omega in the 
subject of consciousness itself. Schelling pur- 
sued this line of thought with certain essential 
modifications, and finally Hegel reduced the 
whole world of reality to a system of categories, 
of which Kant's list was an imperfect adumbra- 
tion. Hegel's was a vast attempt, the most 
thorough-going and stupendous in the whole 
history of philosophy, to disentangle the leading 



6 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

apperceptive syntheses or categories that go to 
make up conscious experience. This* it is that 
gives Hegel his unique place in the history of 
thought. But his attempt to unravel in reflection, 
and present in the form of literary exposition, 
the almost unfathomable complexity 

From Kant f ^ thought-forms in a water-tight 
to Hegel. s . . s 

system was beyond even his intel- 
lectual powers. The Hegelian system as a 
system fell to pieces, although the Hegelian 
influence and the Hegelian method, however 
modified in formulation, can hardly fail to remain 
to all time. In addition to the insuperable diffi- 
culties of the task which the great German 
thinker set himself in the presentation in abstrac- 
tion of the complete system of the categories of 
experienced reality, a fatal flaw, which we shall 
later on have occasion to discuss, seems to us to 
exist at the basis of his conception no less than 
at that of the conceptions of other encyclopaedic 
thinkers with whom he may be compared. 

The empiricist, the agnostic, and the common- 
sense man, all alike treat philosophy as a " dead 
dog." The positive side of Empiricism, it is true, 
has lost its influence, but the negative result sur- 
vives to a large extent. Philosophy is declared 
to have a shifting basis of sand. This idea is 
apparently supported by much of modern meta- 
physical literature, in which, as elsewhere, nega- 
tive criticism is the dominant note. As a matter 
of fact, philosophy, in the sense of metaphysic, has 



INTRODUCTION 7 

attained certain positions that may be regarded 
as rock bases. These indefeasible results, meagre 
as they may seem as compared with Results of 
those of physical science or with the philosophi- 
details of the philosophical systems calanal ysis. 
that have in some cases illuminated and in some 
cases obscured them, form foundations, never- 
theless, on which future thinkers may build. 
Before proceeding to discuss them, and even 
at the risk of their not being fully understood 
at this stage by the reader unversed in these 
studies, we give them here in brief: — 

1. That reality is synonymous with conscious 
experience possible or actual, that every real is 
essentially object of consciousness, and that the 
words "existence" and "reality" have no mean- 
ing except as connoting the content of a possible 
experience — this is, stated in a sentence, the 
position of Modern Idealism, which is that of 
philosophy or metaphysic, properly so called. 

2. The self-consistency of consciousness as a 
whole constitutes the ultimate test of truth. This 
is somewhat clumsily expressed by Herbert 
Spencer (whose general position is not that of 
what we here term Modern Idealism) in his 
well-known formula of " the inconceivability of 
the opposite." The formula itself may be open 
to criticism, but in substance it expresses the 
unimpeachable doctrine as to the test of truth 
which necessarily follows from the main position 
of Idealism, as Idealism is understood in the 



8 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

present day. If reality is co-equal in extension 
with consciousness potential and actual, being 
nothing more than consciousness considered from 
the point of view of content, in a word, nothing 
more than the what-ness of consciousness, it is 
plain that truth, which is the formulation of 
reality in abstract thought, must have as its test 
its inseparability from the fundamental conditions 
of consciousness as a whole. These two posi- 
tions may, it seems to me, be regarded as im- 
pregnable. 

3. An analysis of consciousness discloses that 
every concrete experience or reality cannot be 
analysed into less than two elements correspond- 
ing generally to the Aristotelian distinctions of 
matter and form, potentiality and actuality, and 
that in the union or synthesis of these two ele- 
ments reality or objectivity alone consists. These 
alternate two elements I here identify with the 
alogical and the logical. Apart from their syn- 
thesis, these elements do not exist at all as 
reality, but merely as distinguished and repro- 
duced in reflective thought, or, in other words, 
as abstract notions. 

4. That reality in its ultimate expression im- 
plies a totality of all possible relations of experi- 
ence, but that the term as commonly used simply 
means a totality within certain limits, i.e. a rela- 
tive totality. 

To these four positions the present writer 
would be disposed to add the method of contra- 



INTRODUCTION 9 

diction, or Dialectic, if not precisely in the shape 
it takes in the Hegelian system, yet none the 
less in a modified form. This latter point, how- 
ever, would admittedly be disputed by many 
modern thinkers who otherwise accept the main 
speculative positions as here given. 



CHAPTER I 

THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

All science, all explanation, nay, all knowledge 
whatever, consists in the bringing of a content 
under a new unity, particularity under universality. 
Every unification of this kind constitutes what is 
called an apperception or an apperceptive syn- 
thesis of knowing, and every "knowing" implies 
a synthesis. Science is simply a continuation 
of the same process as common-sense experience 
on a higher plane, the bringing of particular 
contents under new unifications. . The more 
comprehensive the unifying thought-form, the 
higher the point of view as science. This pro- 
cess is also termed categorisation, since every 
apperception necessarily means the reduction of 
the particularity of the given under the thought- 
form or category. 1 The sensible impressions 
immediately given me at the present moment 
of a certain hardness or resistance, a certain 

1 Certain writers, notably Professor James Ward, seem inclined 
to reserve the word " category " for categories in the Kantian 
sense, i.e. those thought-forms specially constitutive of " common- 
sense " reality, as cause, substance, &c. I cannot see, however, 
any sufficient grounds for limiting the use of the word in this 
way. 



PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS n 

limitation in space of this resistance, conjoined 
to visible extension and colour, with their corre- 
sponding limitation in space (such limitation in 
both cases being termed shape or xheapper- 
figure), are in common experience, ceptive 
with its practical ends, reduced by s y nthesis - 
me under a particular category or apperception, 
as "writing-desk," for instance. I further identify 
this synthesis of qualities under the category of 
" wooden object." Becoming more scientific and 
overleaping intermediate steps, I still further 
apperceive the desk as wooden object under a 
wider category of objects possessing certain 
chemical properties, to wit, under the category 
of organic matter. Thus is my knowledge of 
the desk enlarged. Yet, again, the organic 
matter, of which the desk is a particular instance, 
is apperceived by me under the category of 
matter- in-general, that is, resistant extension or 
a "somewhat" occupying space. 

In physical science this process of the reduc- 
tion of the manifold to unity reaches its highest 
point in the bringing of the world of objects 
making up the content of space and time, under 
the generalisation matter-in-motion. Recently 
it has been sought to simplify still further the 
dual generalisation matter-in-motion by a re- 
course to the conception of force or to the 
notion of ether as the root-category in physics. 
The hypothetical spacial unit of matter, the atom, 
is conceived by most modern physicists either as 



12 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

a force-centre or as a focus of vibrations, or, again, 
as ether-stress, that is, a local concentration of 
ether. These ultimate physical hypotheses only 
concern us here as illustrating the direction to- 
wards which the highest generalisation of science 
inevitably tends. But the highest possible or 
conceivable unification arrived at by physical 
science is not all-embracing. By its very nature 
physical science, in all its generalisations, from 
the lowest to the highest, tacitly assumes some- 
thing which, whilst it is presupposed by these 
generalisations, is not included in them. Hence 
The most out °^ Physical science can never come 
exhaustive the most exhaustive category of all. 
category. Science cannot give us that most 
comprehensive view of the world which the 
widest category in its system of articulations 
should open up to us. This highest and most 
comprehensive point of view, which science no 
less than empirical consciousness (common-sense) 
presupposes, while ignoring it in its judgments, 
is consciousness as such. In the last resort, all 
the objects of science, no less than of "common- 
sense," together with the judgments to which 
they give rise, are determinations of conscious- 
ness, possible or actual. * In other words, they pre- 
suppose an apperceiving ego or subject at one end, 
and a somewhat apperceived at the other. When 
closely viewed, this somewhat discloses itself in 
the last resort as nothing but a modification of 
the aforesaid apperceiving ego or subject itself. 



PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 13 

Now, the totality of the processes of apper- 
ceiving and apperceived, subject and object, is 
included under the term consciousness. Con- 
sciousness may be actual or may be potential 
merely. In common language it is generally 
used in the former sense as opposed to the 
" unconscious." As a matter of fact, conscious- 
ness, as concrete, that is, as reality or experience, 
is a synthesis of potential and actual elements, 
as we have said. 1 It is sufficient hereto recognise 
the truth that the highest, the supreme generali- 
sation under which all things can be brought, is 
expressed in the term consciousness, regarded 
per se. % The recognition of this fact does not 
imply any slur on the terms in which science 
ultimately unifies all things from its point of 
view. The claim of philosophy, the branch of 
human knowledge dealing with the world from 
the point of view of, and in terms of, conscious- 
ness as above defined, is not that the formulation 
of science is wrong as far as it goes, Philosoph y 
but merely that the terms under which not bad 
it formulates reality are not ultimate, seienee - 
unimpeachable as they may be within the pur- 
view of physical science itself, as well as from 
the standpoint of ordinary experience.* Philosophy 
must not be regarded as science gone wrong. 
Its method, aim, and subject-matter are radically 
other than those of science. There is a story 

1 In this sense, the unconscious itself belongs to the unity or 
universe of consciousness — it is the potentially conscious (see p. 10). 



i 4 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

told of a contested election in the old bribery- 
days. Two rival candidates on the eve of the 
poll were entertaining the electors with the best 
of their cellars. Port and sherry, we should 
mention, were then the only wines known to 
the average Englishman. One of the candidates, 
finding that his port was becoming exhausted, 
furnished the constituents with a very fine old 
Chateau Lafitte, but this cost him the election, 
the voters declaring that they would have nothing 
more to do with a man who fobbed them off with 
sour port. Men of science, like Hackel, are only 
too fond of denouncing the methods and results 
of philosophy as though it were a kind of sour 
science, and not, as it really is, an altogether 
different "discipline," as regards which the 
conventional criticisms of the man of science are 
as irrelevant and as pointless as the free and 
independent electors' criticism of the excellent 
Chateau Lafitte offered them by their would-be 
representative. 

Philosophy maintains that its own outlook, 
from which the world is viewed as a system of 
articulations of consciousness-in-general, although 
it includes that of science, nevertheless differs 
from it inasmuch as it transcends it, since it 
is the most comprehensive aspect from which 
the world can be regarded. "The world is my 
presentment" ("Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung"), 
says Schopenhauer, at the opening of his Welt 
als Wille. This is another way of expressing 



PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 15 

in a few words that the idealist position, in the 
wider sense of the term, is the one to which the 
thinker is forced who is not content to rest 
satisfied with half-thoughts, but who presses 
forward to a coherent and self-consistent grasp 
of what we call reality. 

In addition to what has been above said, it 
may be desirable in the interests of the reader 
unversed in these matters to explain once more 
the- sense in which the term Consciousness is 
employed in philosophic writing. As commonly 
understood, Consciousness is regarded as the 
attribute of the individual. Each individual mind 
is supposed to have its own consciousness over 
against other individual minds and the world 
without. But Consciousness, in a philosophical 
sense, does not mean consciousness conceived 
as appertaining to this or that individual, which 
at best constitutes the subject-matter of empiri- 
cal psychology, but consciousness considered in 
its essential nature. This is what is meant 
by consciousness-in-general, or consciousness as 
such. To say that the whole system of things 
stands or falls with your, or with my, individual 
consciousness ox psyche (the position of Solipsism), 
is a palpable absurdity. The "world" is plainly 
not "my presentment" in this sense, nor is it 
yours. But notwithstanding this, on analysing 
this " world," we fail to find that it consists of 
anything else than a system of facts or, in other 
words, of possible or actual experiences ; and 



16 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

experience is only another name for consciousness, 
as above denned. Hence, although it is absurd 
to regard reality as exhausted within 
Conseious° tne nrrut s of any personal conscious- 
ness in ness or individual mental experience, 
a^aveat '' nevertne l ess > since it is a system of 
experienced facts and of inferences or 
judgments from those facts, in short, a system 
of sensations or feltnesses knit together by 
thoughts, it is nothing else than, as we have 
said, a system of affections of consciousness. 

The non-philosophical reader will say : " But 
is not consciousness always particular, always in- 
dividual ? " In one sense, yes ; in another sense, 
no. Unreflective experience, common-sense as 
it is termed, itself automatically draws the dis- 
tinction between those thoughts and feelings that 
are special to itself, the content and products 
of one's own mind, and those that constitute 
reality, independent of the individual's own mind, 
or, as it is the current fashion to say, those that 
have an " objective reference " attaching to them. 
But common-sense so called, as philosophy shows, 
falsely ascribes the elements of reality, implicitly 
or explicitly, to something independent of con- 
sciousness altogether. The crux of 
the problem. the Philosophical problem, therefore, 
may be stated as being the existence 
within consciousness of a universal and neces- 
sary element, and the further existence within 
consciousness of an element apparently foreign 



PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 17 

to itself, an object as opposed to itself as subject, 
which element again discloses itself, on analysis, 
as the subject's own negative determination}^ 
The relation of consciousness-in-particular, which 
concerns the individual mind, to. consciousness- 
in-general, which concerns the system of things, 
or reality, is the sempiternal mystery, to find 
an adequate formula for which has been the 
constantly recurring pre-occupation of philosophy 
in its wider issues from Plato downwards. The 
most elaborate of these attempts is undoubtedly 
the philosophy of Hegel himself, the culmination 
of the great German philosophical movement 
taking its rise in Kant. 

From the foregoing it will be evident how 
mistaken is the notion of some scientific thinkers 
that there is any necessary opposition between the 
conclusions of science and those of metaphysic, 
using the latter word in its true Aristotelian 
sense. The standpoint of science is inevitably 
materialistic, and a scientific or "cosmic" philo- 
sophy, that is, an attempted solution of the world- 
problem on the basis of physical science, will be 
successful and convincing precisely in proportion 
to the thoroughness with which the materialistic 
position is adhered to. 

The philosopher pur sang, i.e. the meta- 
physician, can accept all the conclusions of 
scientific Materialism in so far as it is not 
attempted to formulate them dogmatically as 

1 Cf. Spinoza's " omnis determinatio est negation 

B 



18 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

absolute and exclusive. Yet none the less, the 
standpoint of philosophy is necessarily idealistic 
Philosophy m tne sense above explained. And 
as ultima inasmuch as philosophy's highest 
ratio. generalisations are presupposed in the 

conclusions of science, no less than in those of 
ordinary or common-sense experience, philosophy 
claims to have the last word in the solution of the 
world-problem, or, to put it otherwise, claims 
that its problem is the ultima ratio of the 
world-problem altogether. 

Metaphysic, i.e. philosophy proper, it is almost 
needless to say, is not what it is popularly 
supposed to be, that is, is not mere speculation 
on things in general. It is an inquiry into the 
truest, the most comprehensive significance of 
reality. It reduces the world of our common-sense 
experience in its totality, no less than the same 
world as metamorphosed by scientific thought, 
to what is at once its most immediate and most 
ultimate expression, to wit, to a system of de- 
terminations of consciousness-in-general. In this 
way, the radicalness of the opposition between 
thought and thing is abolished. 

Were thought and thing utterly distinct from 
each other, as is commonly supposed, the world 
of philosophic thought would, of course, 
and thing. ke impossible, but so would be also 
the world of common-sense reality. 
A reality containing no thought-element would 
be unapprehensible, since every apperception 



PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 19 

or general term is nothing but a form of thought. 
This is true from the lowest to the highest. To 
know a thing, whether in ordinary experience or 
in science, is the same as to define it under 
thought-forms or general concepts. 

All reality is object of either possible or actual 
knowledge, or it could not be spoken of. An 
unknown reality, a reality not an actual object of 
knowledge, may be spoken of, but certainly not 
an unknowable reality, a something that is not a 
possible object of knowledge. I do R ea iitvas 
not mean to say that all knowledge external 
is primarily logical, for, as I shall oto J eet * 
endeavour to show later on, undoubtedly the 
^logical is not only an element, but a primary 
element, in all experience. An element, however, 
qua element, is not a reality, but an abstraction. 
Reality, as pointed out, necessarily implies a 
synthesis of at least two elements, and nothing 
short of reality can be content or object of con- 
sciousness, the two terms being, in fact, synony- 
mous. In ordinary consciousness — external 
perception — the ultimate elements of a reality or 
thing are an alogical feeling or sensation, and 
a logical form or category. What, for example, 
is meant by the terms we use to express the 
objects of ordinary consciousness — "table," 
"house," "tree," &c. ? We affirm a thing to be 
a "table" .by virtue of connecting in thought 
certain sensations under certain universal forms 
or categories. Its reality as " table" involves at 



20 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

once its distinction from other realities that 
are not " table," and its relational identification 
with certain other realities or objects under 
certain universal concepts common to all ob- 
jects. 

The empiricists of the Associational school, 
like the scholastic nominalists, are fond of dilating 
on the fact that the repeated experience of a par- 
ticular object builds up in the individual mind 
the universal notion of the object in question. 
This may be quite true if it be meant that the 
individual mind becomes aware of the fact that 
an object is what it is through reflection on 
experience, and that it is thus enabled to abstract 
in reflective thought the universal concept from 
the object. But this does not prevent this 
universal concept from forming part of the object 
in the original perception of it. The thought- 
element or concept-relation which the mind 
abstracts, is originally there to be abstracted. 
All that Empiricism, therefore, has to teach us 
in this connection resolves itself into the truism 
that the abstract concept of reflection, or, to 
apply the scholastic phrase, consciousness in its 
Perception " secon< ^ intention," cannot be identi- 
and fied precisely with the same concept 

reflection. as e l ement f t h e concrete world, or 
as entering into consciousness in its " first- 
intention," to wit, as in the original perception. 
The universal and necessary element which all 
reality, all objectivity, involves, is clearly thought 



PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 21 

into the object. Yet although thought into the 

object, it is as clearly not thought into it by the 

individual mind, since the latter finds it already 

there in the object as perceived. If we take 

it away from the object, the object ceases to be 

object. In ordinary perception, the individual 

mind finds the category imbedded in the object 

presented to it. 

Now, as to the second element. In an ordinary 

perception of our common-sense consciousness, 

if per impossibile we abstract from the thing, the 

table, tree, or house, all the special categories 

under which it is apperceived, up to those that 

are involved in the nature of every object, such 

as substantiality, causal connection with the 

universe of objects, &c, we shall find that all 

that remains over is divers modes of feltness, to 

wit, the sense-impressions we term Sense . 

the primary and secondary qualities residuum 

of matter. Once the universal and ona ostrae- 

, , tion of 

necessary element in the synthesis, thought 

the element of thought-forms, of cate- element, 
gories, is gone, the reality, the object, has van- 
ished, leaving the caput mortuum blind sensation 
or feltness in its place. The formal, the logical 
element, in the synthesis under which the alogical 
feltness 1 was apperceived is thus seen to be as 

1 I prefer the word " feltness " as representing the sense-element 
in the object apperceived, since the word " feeling" seems to have 
too subjective a savour in the psychological sense. Moreover, 
there is a tendency nowadays to confine it to those personal 
feelings involving a pleasure-pain reference. 



22 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

essential an element in the concrete object as the 
feltness itself. The element of feltness in the 
object represents the passive and particular side 
in the primary conscious synthesis, the concept- 
form represents the active and universal side. 
The first appears as the contingent, the second 
as the necessary, element. Further, the felt- 
ness is primary and immediate in consciousness, 
while the apperceiving thought is secondary and 
mediate. 

Thought presupposes the sense-element as 
its substratum, its Aristotelian " first matter." 
The relations that thought strikes out, are struck 
out of feltness. Thought reduces the inchoate 
feltness to definiteness by bringing it under an 
apperceptive unity. But the form of apper- 
ception, the concept-form, is always universal, 
from its highest to its lowest determinations. 

Universal ^ or exam pl e > the very specialised con- 
and cept "Northampton shoemaker" is 

particular. no j ess un } versa [ tn an the supremely 

general concept "pure being," familiar to us in 
Porphyry's "tree." From "being" per se, that 
is, " pure being," to " being " as differentiated in 
the concept " Northampton shoemaker " is a far 
cry, but in its lowest specialised shape, no less 
than in its most highly generalised, the concept- 
form remains equally universal. It is never 
particular. It has no thisness accruing to it. 
Another peculiarity of the concept-form is that 
it is outside number. It afe-notes a possible 



PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 23 

infinity of particulars, which is tantamount to say- 
ing that it has no ^-notation. Its significance 
is purely ^wz-notative. 1 

Hence it is that the concept-form never touches 
the thisness of the object. The latter is always 
distinguished from it as immediate feltness, as its 
raw material. Thus the logical, or thought per se^ 
is exclusively universal, and never touches the par- 
ticular at any point. For this reason, language, 
the empirical sign of thought, can never express 
anything except through logical universals. The 
very this of language, like its hei'e and its now, is 
necessarily universalised. It has passed through 
th mill of thought, and has therefore become, as 
Hegel long ago pointed out in the opening 
to the Phdnomenologie (pp. 73-80), any this, 
any here, and any now. In other words, it has 
been universalised by the action of reflective 
thought, and thereby been turned into The log , ieaI 
a psychological notion. The true this- and the 
ness or particularity, having thus been al °£ ieal - 
mediatised by reflective thought, has ceased to 
be its original self. The true this cannot be ex- 
pressed in thought or language. It is essenti- 
ally immediacy, and when mediatised disappears, 
leaving behind it a mere simulacrum of its former 

1 This distinguishes the true concept-form, the true logical 
universal, from what may be called a false general concept, de- 
noting a definite congeries of particulars ; for instance, the name 
of a committee standing for an assignable number of definite 
persons. This false general concept has no connotation, but 
merely a denotation. 



24 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

self. This is at basis the gulf that always sepa- 
rates thinking from being, or thought from felt- 
ness. I am here speaking of the abstract thought 
of the reflecting mind. The mere remembered 
image has, of course, its own existence as a mental 
image, even though it has no existence in space 
in the sense in which the object remembered had 
existence. The element of feltness which enters 
into every determinate consciousness is always 
antithetical to the thought-form. The one is the 
foundation of the particular, the other of the 
universal. The one is through and through 
alogical, the other through and through logical. 
Yet these two elements, the material, the sense- 
particular, and the formal, the thought-universal, 
antithetical though they be, have a common root 
and presupposition, to wit, the potentiality of all 
consciousness expressed in the term (< I"(" ego "), 
the fathomless " that which," whence all conscious 
experience, possible and actual, arises, and into 
which it returns. This ultimate subject of all 
knowledge and knowability, though always be- 
coming object through its primary negation, felt- 
ness, and its reaction thereupon, thought, yet is 
never exhausted in the object {i.e. in the syn- 
thesis of its sensation and thought), but always 
maintains itself as the centre in a process out of 
which these elements well up, and into which 
they return. 

Here we come to an important point. In the 
primary synthesis of consciousness as such, in 



PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 25 

the ultimate apperceptive unity of knowing per 

se, we can distinguish, as already pointed out, 

three elements — (1) a " that which" ml 

t ,> r i- • / \ Thepn- 

an "I, feeling or sensating ; (2) m0 rdial 

a somewhat felt; (x) a reacting of eonseious 

synthesis 
the former on the latter, termed 

thought. This last, the logical process of defin- 
ing, that is, of at once distinguishing and 
connecting, completes the primary synthesis, 
implied in the countless subordinate syntheses 
constituting the woof of experience. Now, in 
orthodox Hegelianism, represented in England 
by the late Professor T. H. Green, Mr. Hal- 
dane, and others, what is called the objective 
reference, that is, the determination of feltness 
as independent object accrues solely to the 
third, the formal, element, that of thought, or 
logical determination. That the definiteness of 
the reference is logical is, of course, clear ; but 
is it not primarily contained in the mere blind 
alogical feltness — what Fichte termed the 
" Anstoss"? In that negative element within 
the subject of consciousness itself, do we not 
find the very condition of the determinate objec- 
tive reference of thought, the original opposition \ 
within the subject itself? Is it not the opposi- 
tion between the feeling self and the feltness that 
confronts it as its negation or limitation ? The 
answer to this question given by the school 
referred to, namely, that out of thought alone is 
reality constructed, is connected with a wide- 



26 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

spread tendency, hitherto dominant in speculation 
more or less from Plato downwards, to hold that 
the concept-form, or at least thought as relating 
activity (of which the concept-form is regarded 
as the product), is absolute.' 

In Plato we have the classical expression of 
the hypostatisation of the concept-form per se, 

'„ . in Aristotle and Hegel that of the 
Pallogism. . . . & ^. . r 

activity generating it. 1 his way or re- 
garding the primary synthesis of consciousness, 
and hence the complex of reality which is its 
content, I term Pallogism. 1 It reappears in various 
thinkers who have concerned themselves with 
constructive metaphysic, or theory of knowledge. 
We find it in the more constructive schoolmen as 
well as in Spinoza, and considerable traces of 
it in Kant. In the vov$ ttoivtikos of Aristotle, 
Hegel saw with justice an adumbration of his 
own theory of the "Idee" which is also nothing 
else than the hypostatisation of the relating acti- 
vity of thought. 2 

The subject, as the presupposition of this 
reality, Hegel rejected as a relic of the thing-in- 
itself, treating it as a mere product of thought- 
activity. With him the ego was a function of 
thought, and not thought a function of the ego. 
May we not surely regard the formalism of which 

x Erdmann and others have used the less elegant form "panlo- 
gism " to express the same idea. 

2 By hypostatisation is, of course, meant the treatment of a 
metaphysical element of a concrete as though it were itself an 
independent concrete, i.e. a reality per se. 



PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 27 

the Hegelian system bears the impress, and which 
led to its collapse, as the Nemesis brought upon 
him by this very hypostasis of thought ? That the 
apperceptive activity of thought is a necessary 
element in all conscious experience is plain, but 
it is quite the reverse of plain that this thought- 
activity is itself the root-principle of the conscious 
synthesis. But this assumption, that thought 
itself constitutes the totality of all things, had 
become so deeply ingrained in modern specula- 
tion, that until quite recently to attack it was like 
desecrating the holy of holies of metaphysic. 
Yet it amounts to nothing less than the assertion 
that in the last resort the world of reality is 
nought but a mere system of thought-forms sub- 
sisting, so to say, in vacuo. All that is not form, 
all that is not logical, is ignored or declared to be 
absorbed in the final synthesis of thought. 

Viewing the question from another standpoint, 
the moment of conscious immediacy, the actual, 
is similarly regarded by this school of thinkers as 
the only valid element in the synthesis. Yet why 
this mere moment of immediate apprehension, 
the meret surface of consciousness, should be of 
such transcendent significance over the infinity 
of implications it connotes — in a word, over the 
potential element in which it is imbedded — is 
never demonstrated, although it is assumed. Why 
is that vanishing moment, the actual, regarded 
as absorbing the potential, and as the ultimate 
factor of all reality ? In every concrete conscious- 



28 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

ness the vanishing moment is surely the least 
important factor. The mere look, the actual 
awareness of any object of external perception, 
is simply the sign or indication of an indefinite 
number of potentialities behind the mere present 
appearance, that is, of elements that are outside 
actual consciousness. 

When we consider the conditions of know- 
ledge rather than its object, a corresponding 
result of the analysis discloses itself. The sub- 
ject which knows or is conscious — which consti- 
tutes its own determinations into a world of 
objects — knows itself under the form of individua- 
tion, that is, as a memory-synthesis within which 
it continuously becomes realised. This is the 
self-object, the individual mind or soul of psycho- 
logy, sometimes termed the " empirical ego." But 
it may be said that the subject of knowledge is 
merely a name for the universal element in expe- 
rience, just as the sense-factor, the feltness therein, 
constitutes the particular element. It may be 
said that they are correlative, and that neither is 
more fundamental than the other. My reply to 
this is that the categorised feltnesses constituting 

Pure "ego " the world of perception, that is, the 
versus em- world of common-sense reality, pre- 
pirieal suppose a subject of consciousness, of 

which they are the determinations. 
Although a bare ego, undetermined even as mere 
feltness, a subject without object, may be unima- 
ginable, it is not therefore self-contradictory and 



PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 29 

absurd, as is the notion of a bare object cut 
off from a subject — in a word, a system of con- 
cious determinations out of relation to any that 
of which they are the determinations. The 
object is always reducible to an affection of the 
subject. On the other hand, a conscious subject 
does not presuppose its own object in the same 
sense, although it may be quite true that it is 
unimaginable without object. 1 It is clear, then, 
that the potentiality of consciousness-in-general, 
which we term Subject or " pure ego," is not on 
precisely the same level with its own actualised 
expression, the object-world. It has a pre- 
suppositional value, a genetic priority, over the 
latter. ~This relation is reproduced within the 
object-world itself as the infinity of implications 
contained within this world, in contradistinction 
to its actuality as perceived, its mere superficial 
appearance as isolated phenomenon. It is this 
potential element in the object, its " permanent 
possibilities of sensation," to adapt Mill's well- 
known phrase to a somewhat extended meaning, 
by virtue of which we intuitively postulate it as a 
somewhat existing independently of our individual 
consciousness with its particular acts of percep- 
tion. Modern Idealism shows us, indeed, that it 
does not exist apart from ourselves in the sense 
of apart from that ultimate element in ourselves, 
the Subject which all knowing presupposes, but 

1 We are of course in no way concerned here with the mate- 
rialistic conclusions of science, legitimate in their own sphere. 



3 o THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

that it does nevertheless obtain independently of 
ourselves as concrete individual minds, that is, 
apart from the particular memory-synthesis that 
knits together our experience as a particular 
whole in time, as "mine" as opposed to "thine" 
or "his." 

But if the world resolve itself on analysis into 
a system of presentments or determinations of a 
Subject-in-general, the "I" of self-reference, as 
it is termed, it follows that this latter assumes 
the place of a materia prima of consciousness, of 
which the world of reality is the form. All that 
exists is referable to this one root, whilst the 
Subject is not referable to aught beyond itself. 
This ultimate postulate, this ground of all feeling, 
willing, and thinking, is yet never exhausted in 
feeling, willing, and thinking, but always main- 
tains itself as the radiating centre from which these 
elements of sensation, self-activity, and thought, 
come, and to which they return. The primary 
sense-element is related to the subject of con- 
„. . , sciousness in a double manner. Firstly, 
factors of it is related as the mere negation of 

experi- tne subject, the " Anstoss" of Fichte ; 
enee. » i • -ic 

secondly, this self-negation is at once 

distinguished from, and related to, the Subject 
under certain thought-forms and the sense-forms 
of time and space, as a connected system of pos- 
sible and actual feltness, that is, as object-world. 
In these three terms or momenta — (i) the ab- 
stract " I " of self-reference, or subject-in-general ; 



PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 31 

(2) the bare object as such, the mere antithesis 
within itself of the subject ; (3) the at once dis- 
tinguishing and unifying action of thought-activity 
integrating the inchoate feltness, the bare object, as 
a system or world — in these three terms w r e have 
the framework of the trichotomy or dialectic that 
Hegel attempted to formulate in his own way. 

It is not our intention in the present work to 
discuss the question of the special categories that 
help to make reality what it is. This is a topic 
upon which much has been, and may be, written 
on various lines. It is sufficient for our purpose 
here to point out once more that, of the salient 
categories of objectivity, viz. substance, cause, and 
reciprocal action, the last named is pre-eminently 
the working category at once of the higher 
sciences and of philosophic thought. The one- 
sided determination expressed by the thought- 
form called " cause-and-effect " inevitably yields 
when a given department of reality is viewed from 
a more comprehensive standpoint, to the thought- 
form called "mutual-determination." The principle 
of individuation or particularity, and therewith of 
number, first arises within the object-world inte- 
grated by thought as a connected universe. v The 
" world " displays itself as numerical infinity. As 
opposed to this, consciousness-in-general acquires 
in the individual mind, in the " object of the 
internal sense," as Kant terms it, a numerical 
unity antithetical to this numerical infinity. But 
it is a pseudo-unity only, in the sense that it is 



32 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

not an absolute unity like the primary Subject, 
which is conscious of it, just as it is conscious of 
other objects. There is, moreover, another differ- 
ence. The world of external objects as content 
of experience is given immediately as a plurality. 
My personality or individual mind, on the con- 
trary, is only indirectly given, as a unit. The, 
immediate apperception of myself as this and rib 
other memory-synthesis, gives colour to the notion 
that my individual mind is absolute, and hence, to 
the time-honoured fallacy of the Subjective idealist 
— Solipsism. > But thought revolts against such 
an assumption as inconsistent with its appercep- 
tion of the world-system as a whole. It thereby 
reduces the memory-synthesis or personality, the 
myself, from the rank of an absolute unity to that 
of a relative unit, in fact, in one sense to the level 
of external objects in space, as being a particular 
sensible, representative of a logical universal, a 
class or kind, namely, " minds " or "personalities." 
Myself as personality or memory-synthesis is an 
object, i.e. a particular determination of conscious- 
ness-in-general, just as much as any external 
object in space. But this psychological object, 
Kant's " object of the internal sense," in that it 
is identified in its immediacy with the subject of 
consciousness-in-general, is unique in its char- 
acter. The phrase " I am self-conscious" simply 
indicates the immediate identification of the Sub- 
ject of consciousness-in-general with this my par- 
ticular memory-synthesis, here and now, as object. 



PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 33 

In the consciousness of external objects no 
such identification is made. In external percep- 
tion, in common-sense experience, we have a 
more or less definite unity of possible or actual 
feltnesses as terms knit together by thought- 
forms. Such is what we term the external 
universe. The relations of this same external 
universe are reproduced in the memory-synthesis 
of the individual mind as abstract psychological 
concepts. This fact that objective thought-rela- 
tions, when reproduced as abstract mental con- 
cepts within an individual memory-synthesis, are 
no longer the same as they were in their other 
capacity as entering into the synthesis of the 
real world — in other words, as immediate deter- 
minations of the Subject of consciousness-in- 
general — has led to the confusion of which 
Empiricism is guilty, of regarding thought and 
thing, knowing mind and known world, as radi- 
cally disparate entities or (if one will) " series of 
phenomena." Modern Idealism dis- 
sipates this confusion in showing that Q ° ^ h e S10ns 
mental and material facts are ' ' cut out Assoeia- 
of one block," that things are but ^J^j 
sense-modifications of consciousness 
brought into unity in a system of apperceptive 
syntheses, and that ideas in the mind are but 
these same apperceptive syntheses reproduced 
at second-hand, in abstracto, by reflection. But 
both alike are modifications of conscious ex- 
perience. That the abstract notion is not the 

c 



34 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

same as the corresponding thought-form as 
entering into the original apprehension of 
reality, that the one cannot take the place of 
the other, is obvious, but on their essential 
identity rests the possibility of our primary 
concrete consciousness no less than the "ideas" 
which the reflective consciousness of the in- 
dividual abstracts therefrom, and which are 
so scornfully opposed to "things," alike by the 
common-sense Philistine and the empirical philo- 
sopher. From this it will be clear that philosophy 
does not impose mental figments on reality, or 
mistake them for reality. It simply analyses 
concrete consciousness, or reality as given, and 
presents the results of this analysis, the elements 
of which reality is composed, in the form of 
abstract notions. ♦ 

It is at the point of self-consciousness that 
the Subject as the eternal possibility of knowing, 
and the Object, as the eternal possibility of the 
known, coalesce, and thus proclaim their essential 
unity. The difficulty of the ordinary man in 
understanding that reality is nothing else than 
a system of related impressions of consciousness- * 
in-general, of which his memory-synthesis is 
simply the temporary determination — the notion 
he has that his mind truly apprehends a reality 
subsisting per se — rests upon his inability to 
grasp the cardinal distinction just indicated. He 
fails to distinguish between the mental world on 
the one hand, that is, the sum of thoughts and 



PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 35 

feelings knit together by memory and called 

mind, and, on the other hand, the subject or 

" I " to which this mind-object is re- 

- , , • 1 11 1 1 • Ultimate 

ferred together with all other objects, subject and 

Alike the " mental world" of reflec- personal 
tion and memory and the "material 
world" of direct perception are parts of the 
experience of this latter, i.e. the " I " of Kant's 
" original unity of apperception," termed here 
the. Subject of consciousness-in-general. The 
assumption of a world outside myself, in the 
last resort, means nothing but the ascription of 
a certain section of my sensations to a universal 
element in my consciousness valid for all alike, 
that is, an element not peculiar to myself as 
individual, as is the play of my personal thoughts 
and feelings, which are given in the synthesis, 
and which I recognise as belonging exclusively 
to me and to no one else. 

We will now sum up the foregoing argument. 
The central truth that metaphysic has estab- 
lished is that reality is nothing but a system 
of modifications of consciousness possible and 
actual. When we talk of the real world, what 
we mean is the related and articulated system 
of these modifications. To speak of an exist- 
ence that does not belong to the system of 
consciousness is a self-contradiction — a meaning- 
less absurdity. On analysis then, as already 
stated, the primary form of the unity of con- 
sciousness presupposed in all its modifications 



36 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

implies three elements — (i) an "I" as subject 
which feels ; (2) an opposing feltness, the nega- 
tion of this " I " as such ; and (3) the reciprocal 
fixation of the feltness by the subject which feels, 
and conversely. The first two of these elements 
constitute respectively the possibility of appre- 
hending and the possibility of apprehendedness. 
We may term them the matter of consciousness. 
The third element, that of reciprocal relation, 
which we call thought, reason, or the logical, 
as form of consciousness, completes the primary 
synthesis — i.e. consciousness-in-general — the uni- 
versal synthesis which all more concrete modifi- 
cations presuppose. Such, and nothing else, 
is the ultimate nature of reality. The above 
synthesis is the eternal framework of reality, and 

, ± . when we postulate reality in any sense 
Synthetic . L ..... . . , 

movement whatever, this it is that we wittingly 

of eon- or unwittingly postulate. ' On close 

seiousness. . • , . . ,. , . . 

inspection this primordial synthesis 

resolves itself, strictly speaking, into its primary 
element, as Fichte showed. Feltness is nothing 
but a modification of " I " as feeling, and thought 
is, again, nothing but the reaction of the that 
which feels upon the what of its feltness. " That- 
ness means ultimately bare subject ; whatness, 
bare object. The function of philosophy as 
metaphysic is to analyse the conditions of ex- 
perience, and in doing so it finds a synthetic 
process eternally passing through the same 
elements, which elements, though clearly dis- 



PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 3 ? 

tinguishable in thought, never appear separate 
in fact. This primary synthesis, implied in all 
consciousness whatever, and discernible in the 
immediacy of every conscious moment, furnishes 
the mould or formula for all reality in its 
dynamic aspect, that is, for every real process 
of experience. / Throughout the whole system 
of the universe we have the self-same elements 
recurring in a transformed guise. Hence the 
ultimate aim of philosophy is the tracing of 
these elements in every plane of reality, and 
their exposition in the forms of reflective thought. 
The attempt to do this was made by Hegel, 
but the result was vitiated, in part at least, by 
the assumption that the formal element, thought 
or the concept, was ultimate, and that the 
alogical elements in the real were finally resolv- 
able into thought-forms. This led necessarily 
to a hypostatisation of thought or the logical 
per se. s 

Even time itself has no meaning except within 
the primordial synthesis of experience above 
spoken of, the triple momenta of which are 
eternally translating and re-translating them- 
selves as time-content. Here we have the true 
inwardness of causation and evolution. From 
this it follows that the highest point to which 
any science can be brought is where its subject- 
matter can be presented as a dialectical process, ^ 
that is, where the elements of the original con- v 
scious synthesis referred to are discerned as 



38 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

transformed and translated in the various aspects 
of the real world, and are accurately expressed 
in the forms of abstract thought. This, though 
the highest ideal of scientific analysis, has not 
yet been fully realised in any department. 

The dialectical method, as it is called, con- 
tains many pitfalls for the unwary, and simpler 

if more superficial methods of treat- 
of the ment are in most cases all that we 

dialectical can aspire to. It is enough for the 

present state of our knowledge if we 
never completely lose sight of the crucial truth 
that all evolution, all existence, the world and 
all that is therein, is a complex living and 
moving synthesis, but a synthesis which it may 
be the task of ages to adequately unravel, and 
present even as a relatively coherent formula- 
tion, in the terms of reflective thought. 



CHAPTER II 

MODERN IDEALISM 

The great achievement of the German classical 
philosophy from Kant to Hegel is the definite over- 
throw of the old materialist, spiritualist, 
and dualist, standpoints respectively, potion 
by its having made clear once for 
all, the futility of attempting to explain conscious- 
ness by any system of its own modifications, by 
anything that lies within consciousness, an attempt 
resembling that of Baron Munchausen to pull 
himself out of the water by his own wig. This 
should be obvious, since these modifications 
necessarily themselves presuppose consciousness. 
All the three standpoints referred to involve 
the absurdity of subordinating consciousness as 
a whole to something less comprehensive than 
itself, to something that is itself a content of con- 
sciousness, such as physical substance, or mind, 
in the psychological sense, as particularised in the 
personality. The gist of the standpoint arrived at 
by Modern Idealism initiated in the Kant- Hegel 
movement, as we have seen in the last chapter, 
consists in the recognition of the fact that existence 
or reality must mean knowableness and known- 

39 



4 o THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

ness — in other words, that it obtains only in and 
for conscious experience — a conscious experience 
not necessarily limited by any particular memory- 
synthesis or individual mind, but constituting the 
eternal possibility of the infinite number of 
memory-syntheses that co-exist with and succeed 
each other in the time-order. 

Now this general position, when conceded, 
opens up more than one controversial issue. In 

the first place, there is the question of 
Philosophic w h at } s k nown as philosophic Theism. 

The hypothesis of philosophic, as distin- 
guished from popular, Theism, is that conscious- 
ness-in-general not merely obtains as a bare poten- 
tiality realisable in the infinity of individual minds, 
of whose consciousness it forms the basis, but is 
realised apart therefrom in a mind that over- 
shadows all such individual minds, a mind having 
at least a quasi-individual existence as personality 
in a manner independent of them. It is main- 
tained that only by participation in the conscious- 
ness of this individuo-universal mind is reality 
apprehended. On this theory two or three suf- 
ficiently pertinent criticisms may be made. If 
this divine mind be conceived pallogistically as 
hypostasis of thought- forms, and nevertheless in 
some undefined sense as a personality, as by the 
old Hegelian "right," it may be objected that all 
personality as such involves alogical as well as 
logical elements. \Cf. Chapter III. on "The 
Logical and the Alogical.") A personal mind 



MODERN IDEALISM 41 

composed of pure intelligibles would be a pure 
abstraction, and no mind at all. But, apart from 
this, the assumption in any form or shape of the 
absolute element at the basis of our consciousness 
obtaining under conditions fundamentally different- 
from those known to us, remains an assumption 
merely, an assumption which could only be justified 
if it could be shown to be a necessary postulate 
involved in the self-consistency of conscious ex- 
perience as a whole. * This, however, is surely 
not the case. All that the analysis of the condi- 
tions of our conscious experience discloses to us 
is that consciousness is realised primarily in a so- 
called "external" world or material complex as 
reflected in a mind or mental complex. The 
things composing this external world are 
commonly called "real," a word which in popular 
discourse is used in contradistinction to the word 
" ideal," which is used for the feelings and 
thoughts exclusively pertaining to the mind. 
Now we submit that no analysis of the conditions 
of experience can discover this " divine mind " to 
us, if by a " divine mind " we are to understand in 
this connection, an eternally concrete and actual 
self-consciousness. * But apart from the pallogistic 
difficulty referred to above as regards such a self- 
consciousness, it is, we must again insist, impos- 
sible to show, not only that it is a necessary 
assumption, but that it is an assumption subserving 
any purpose of explanation whatsoever. It does 
not do so for the simple reason that an eternally 



42 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

complete and yet personal consciousness must be 
just' as much independent of our consciousness as 
one individual mind is independent of another. 
Where you have concrete personality in whatever 
shape, you have the element of particularity in- 
troduced, that very element of individuation that 
separates one human mind from all others. The 
conception of one more personality distinct from 
mine, no matter how much wider and more 
magnificent the range of its personal conscious- 
ness might be, cannot possibly add anything to, 
or subtract anything from, the explanation of my 
personal consciousness here and now, or serve in 
any way to elucidate the processes of my con- 
sciousness. Consciousness-in-general is, qua the 
actual self-consciousness of the individual, merely 
potential, and in any other connection it cannot 
concern us as philosophers (however it may other- 
wise). The foregoing objection is, of itself, fatal 
to the claims of philosophical Theism even as a 
useful hypothesis in philosophic analysis, let alone 
as a necessary postulate of speculation. Such 
being the case, our only possible attitude with 
regard to the question must be the agnostic 
one. 

We have already repeatedly insisted upon the 
fact that all the apperceptive unifications called 
thought-forms presuppose two alogical factors — a 
feeling subject, and its oppositional feltness — as 
their matter or content. Now, with most specu- 
lative thinkers who have sought to elucidate the 



MODERN IDEALISM 43 

main issues of the metaphysical problem, the 
alogical element in experience is treated as 
merely an imperfection, a clumsy vehicle, of the 
logical. According to this view, the alogical, the 
matter of consciousness, is merely a negation and 
passing phase of the logical principle 
itself. The potentiality of the subject pjwfsm. 
and of the blind feltness, which is at 
once the affirmation and limitation of the former, 
is equally absorbed and abolished in the logical 
categories that are necessary to its actualisation 
as reality (Hegel). The Platonic universalia 
ante rem is the earliest and crudest expression of 
this doctrine of Pallogism, which would constitute 
the thought-form as reality. It is also traceable, 
though in an infinitely less crude form, in Plato's 
nominal antagonist Aristotle, and through his in- 
fluence in some of the more important of the 
Schoolmen. In modern times we find it in most 
of the synthetic thinkers, notably in Spinoza, with 
whom, in spite of the initial assumptions of his 
system, the attribute of thought gradually acquires 
a position of exclusive predominance. But the 
man with whom the doctrine of Pallogism is more 
intimately connected than with any other is un- 
doubtedly Hegel. He it was who, coming as 
the culmination of the line of speculation begin- 
ning with Kant, pushed the pallogistic position 
to its farthest extreme, and developed it in every 
department of philosophic thought, with a con- 
sistency and wealth of detail unapproached by any 



44 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

thinker before him. The extreme Pallogism of 
the Hegelian position was met, even during 
Hegel's lifetime, by a counterblast from one who, 
like himself, belonged to the main stem of the 
Modern Idealism that dates from Kant, namely, 
Schopenhauer. The protagonist of modern 
Pessimism, whatever else he did, postulated an 
alogical principle — impulse or will — as the prius 
of consciousness, and therewith of the reality 
that is its product. For Schopenhauer, and 
metaphysicians influenced by him, the alogical is 
the presupposition of all things, and the logical 
merely the post-supposition. Herbart also from 
another point of view undoubtedly represents a 
reaction against the pallogistic formalism of the 
Hegelian system. It is to Hegel therefore, and 
to such followers of Hegel who, like the late 
Professor Thomas Hill Green, are inclined to 
accentuate rather than otherwise this side of his 
system, that criticism' is more especially directed 
in discussing Pallogism. With Hegel, taking 
him in his most uniform and consistent attitude, 
reality is simply thought-process, the timeless 
evolution of the concept. Hence it is for him 
merely an eternally evolving system of logic or 
synthesis of thought-relations. The antithesis of 
form and matter is unessential. In the last resort, 
matter is absorbed and abolished in form. The 
primal elements of consciousness, the subject con- 
stituting the possibility of knowing and that self- 
negation or feltness which is the root-principle 



MODERN IDEALISM 45 

of the object as such, are alike for Hegel mere 
momenta or incomplete terms in the one process 
of the "thinking of thought." They are treated 
as Ansickseyn, Filrsichseyn, and Anundfursichseyn 
(In-itselfness, For-itselfness, and In-and-for-itself- 
ness), which are, with Hegel, the triple momenta 
at the basis of all reality. 1 

The logical in its highest form as " Idee" the 
eternally complete system of thought-determina- 
tions, is, in the Hegelian philosophy, 

,, .ail a r\ r u .\J The "Idee" 

the Alpha and Omega 01 all things. as the 



There is no subject of thought proper, highest 

form of 
logical. 



but the mere thought-activity with ft> " rn 



Hegel hypostatised as "Idee" creates 
what we call the subject. Subject is its self- 
determination, just as object is its self-determi- 
nation, no more and no less. * Hence the Hege- 
lian concept or "Idee" has been compared to a 
bridge without ends. It is a system of relations 
in vacuo without a that or a what, which is 
related. We observe throughout in Hegel a 
dread of the thing-in-itself- — the thing-in-itself 
being the absurd guise in which the alogical 

1 " AnsicJiseyn" represents in Hegel's system the immediacy of 
the " I " as feeling ; " Fiirsichseyn " represents the self-negation 
ofthe"I"as feltness ; " Amtndfiirsic/iseyn" represents the com- 
pleted experience or reality as mediatised by thought, the reciprocal 
relation of the alogical antitheses. This terminology is of use even 
for those who do not accept the Hegelian Pallogism. The middle 
term, the "Fiirsichseyn" is the moment of separation and 
antithesis, or of isolation. This isolation is abolished in the third 
term and the unity re-affirmed, no longer embryonic as in the first 
term, but fully-fledged and developed — a unity in difference. 



46 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

elements in the general synthesis of conscious- 
ness had appeared in earlier philosophies, espe- 
cially in Kant. Hegel evidently suffered from 
noumenophobia. Hence his Pallogism is more 
uncompromising and thoroughgoing than that of 
other thinkers. Now, the notion of the thing- 
in-itself, if by this be meant a reality or object 
existing outside all possible consciousness, is a 
manifest contradiction in terms. But though 
there may be no thing-in-itself, there is undoubt- 
edly an in-itselfness in the thing, that is, in 
reality — and not merely as a passing phase, but 
an ineradicable in-itselfness that is never abol- 
ished by for-itselfness. This stubborn truth at 
times gives Hegel trouble, and forces him to 
strange devices of language in order to save the 
situation for his pallogistic thesis. But in spite 
of the colossal ingenuity displayed in the attempt 
to evolve reality out of thought-forms alone, the 
suspicion that, after all, we are wandering through 
what Hegel himself calls a " world of shadows," 
pursues us as we follow his exposition. The 
philosophic need, on the other hand, demands 
an adequate formulation in reflective thought, of 
reality as such, and not merely of its relational 
forms. On this rock of Pallogism his system 
therefore made shipwreck. The conviction that 
out of thought alone thing can never be deduced, 
that all thought-determinations are determina- 
tions of a somewhat, which somewhat, though not 
distinct from consciousness, is nevertheless dis- 



MODERN IDEALISM 47 

tinguishable from the thought-element in con- 
sciousness, and that not merely in degree but in 
kind — this is a conviction against which Pallogism 
dashes itself in vain, and which in the long run 
it hopelessly endeavours to circumvent by the 
devices of exposition. If words have any mean- 
ing, conceptivity is not co-existent with the whole 
synthesis of experience. 

The gist of the standpoint of Modern Idealism 
dating from Kant is undoubtedly the explicit 
recognition of the truth that all exist- standpoint 
ence must mean knowableness or of Modern 
knownness, or that the universe exists Ideallsm « 
only as conscious experience. And if, as I have 
heard certain Hegelian friends contend, this is all 
that is meant by Hegel's " Begriff" or "Idee" 
the criticism resolves itself into one of termi- 
nology ; but the consequences of the pallogistic 
abstractness of the Hegelian main position are 
abundantly evidenced in the working out of the 
system. Any formulation that makes thought the 
Alpha and Omega of all things issues in a stasis. 
In its final result it inevitably takes the form of 
a complete and perfect divine mind composed of 
pure intelligibles, from which is eliminated all the 
material element in reality, all that is alogical, 
all feeling, all particularity, all contingency, all 
impulse or will as such — in a word, all the 
dynamical factor in experience. Now, it ought 
to be at once evident to the practised thinker 
that this reduction of all things to pure logical 



48 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

determination, to a consciousness that is nothing 
but one vast self-sufficient system of thought- 
forms, to a consciousness, to put the matter in 
another way, that is pure actuality, in which 
consciousness the shadow of the potential is not, 
means bidding farewell to the concrete, to the 
real, altogether. For all concreteness, all reality, 
as such, discloses itself on analysis as presuppos- 
ing the alogical elements above referred to, and 
presupposing them not as mere vanishing phases 
of the logical, but as permanent and necessary 
elements of every real synthesis, without which 
elements the reality vanishes, leaving behind an 
abstraction as its caput mortuum. 

It is impossible even to conceive of any real 
synthesis from which elements that are through 
and through alogical are excluded. An abso- 
lute thought, if it mean anything at all, must 
mean a disembodied relation without a that 
which is related, and no system of such dis- 
embodied relations can even represent reality 
for reflection, let alone give us reality. What 
gives us reality is certain primary alogical ele- 
ments, of which the logical category, under 
which they are apperceived, is the mere rela- 
tional form, and which are hence presupposed 
by this form as its condition. The postulate of 
all thought is the feltness of an " ego " or subject, 
which becomes realised as experience through 
this very feltness, which is its own negation 
(the u Anstoss" of Fichte). This subject of 



MODERN IDEALISM 49 

knowledge, which is the primary postulate of all 
consciousness, may be conceived, as with Fichte, 
as the eternal possibility of knowing, or, with 
Schopenhauer and to some extent with Schelling, 
as the infinite nisus or impulse towards an end, 
into the attainment of which conscious experience 
enters. Hegel thought that he was making an 
advance on Fichte and Schelling (of Schopen- 
hauer he was probably unaware) in eliminating 
the material element in the system of experience 
in favour of the hypostatisation of the formal 
element. In doing this, he claimed to be getting 
rid of the last relic of the old Kantian thing-in- 
itself. What he really did get rid of was, as already 
said, the material side of experience, thereby 
taking leave of reality altogether and entrench- 
ing himself in a castle of abstractions. Get rid 
of the alogical elements entirely he could not, 
and therefore he had to fit them into his system 
and serve them up for reflective thought under 
the guise of categories, while ignoring their real 
nature in doing so. Now this may be a juggle, 
but it is a juggle that is very plausible, as we 
shall see later on, and it has undoubtedly imposed 
upon many thinkers of eminence and acuteness. 
In the modern English Hegelian school, for 
example, this point is particularly noticeable. 

The way in which the juggle accomplishes 
itself is, we submit, as follows : Philosophy as 
metaphysic is the formulation in the terms of 
reflective consciousness of the conditions involved 

D 



50 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

in the constitution of our primary apperceptive 
consciousness (consciousness-in-general). Now, 
The reflective consciousness always oper- 

pallogistie ates through abstract thought-forms, 
juggle. t jj at j s> through thought-forms not as 
constituting an element of a real apperceptive 
synthesis, but as reproduced in the mind, crystal- 
lised as abstract mental notions. In thinking of 
any objective relation or law it necessarily takes 
on the form and colour of such an abstract mental 
notion. It is not the same thing as it was as 
constituting part of the object-world, but is trans- 
lated by reflection into its own psychological 
terms. v 

It is clear, therefore, that the material element, 
the alogical, the element of blind feltness or sen- 
sation, by the very fact that it is the antithesis 
of thought, cannot appear in the reflective con- 
sciousness (which is nothing if not logical) save 
as represented by a mental concept as its sign. 
Hence it seems unimpeachable to treat the 
alogical groundwork of experience as an attenu- 
ated concept. " Being," itself, in this way, becomes 
merely the poorest and most barren of categories. 
And this is done by the Hegelians in the case of 
all such alogical elements as "being," sense-quality, 
&c. Being means simply the possibility of knowing 
and knownness as opposed to their actuality, in 
the last resort the subject as opposed to the 
object. In this sense it is identical with the bare 
subject of knowledge and with its ultimate oppo- 



MODERN IDEALISM 51 

sition within itself, Fichte's u Anstoss" or, as 
we have termed it here, primary feltness, which 
represents the elementary form of the object 
as opposed to the subject. (See discussion in 
Chapter III.) Now these elements, presupposed 
in every apperceptive synthesis, are certainly 
alogical. They may be distinguished by reflective 
thought as components, nay, the very groundwork 
of reality, but they cannot be expressed by the 
former save, as above said, in the unsatisfactory 
guise of a mental notion with a very poor 
content. The same applies to the attempt to 
translate the alogical element of sense-quality 
into the forms of reflective thought. Here logi- 
cians and psychologists have recognised an 
anomaly, and endeavoured to explain it away. 
The outcome of the apparent reduction of alogical 
elements to the logical notion may be termed 
pseudo-concepts as opposed to true logical forms. 
One of the tests of the alogical, it may be here re- 
marked, is that it always involves infinity as op- 
posed to the logical, which is always definite. (Cf. 
Chapter III. on " The Alogical and the Logical.") 
It may be here not out of place to discuss 
briefly the attempts that have been made to 
eliminate the notion of the primary 

Subject or pure "ego" from philosophy. The " e £°" 
T r : . 1 . . , , as red rag. 

If there is anything in the present day 

that acts as a red rag to the metaphysical critic, 

it is to talk about the "ego." He bristles up at 

the bare mention of the word. The metaphysical 



52 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

or epistemological "ego" is a windmill against 
which he tilts at once. He will tell you how the 
idea of an ultimate "ego," or ground of knowing, 
is merely based on the grammatical necessity for 
every predicate to have a subject. Perceptions, 
therefore, are taken to involve a perceiver, con- 
sciousness to involve a something that is conscious, 
and so on ; in other words, it is assumed that 
this metaphysical postulate is based upon a mere 
necessity of grammar. In talking thus it never 
enters into the critic's calculation that he may be 
putting the cart before the horse, and that this 
admittedly deep-lying grammatical principle may 
be itself derivative from a still deeper lying meta- 
physical principle — that the grammatical require- 
ment that every predicate shall have a subject 
does not hang in vacuo, but may itself be the 
reflection of a fundamental postulate presupposed 
in all consciousness, and a fortiori in all thought, 
alike whether expressing itself in grammar, in 
the terms of ordinary logic, or otherwise. 

Then again, confusing between the epistemo- 
logical and the psychological use of the word 
Question- " e g°>" tne critic will assure you that 
begging the notion of an "ego" altogether is 
critieism. traceable to the ensemble of organic sen- 
sation, a fact which probably does play a part in 
the notion of the empirical self. {Cf. Chapter IV. 
on " The Individual Consciousness.") There are 
indeed a dozen different ways in which the smart 
critic will prove to you that the notion of a pure 



MODERN IDEALISM 53 

" ego " is illegitimate, and show you how the 
fallacy involved therein arises. But if you ex- 
amine his arguments you will find that they take 
for granted throughout the very assumption it is 
their business to controvert. The pure " ego " has 
been sometimes described (e.g. Professor Ward, 
Ency. Brit., ninth edition, article "Psychology") 
as "an imaginary subject " behind the psycho- 
logical " ego." This, I take it, is also inaccurate. 
The "pure subject" is not an imaginary subject 
in any ordinary sense of the word "imaginary." 
It is the ultimate postulate of all thought and 
action whatever. In a word, it is the ultimate 
postulate involved in the ultimate coherence or 
self-consistency of consciousness itself. You may 
disprove its legitimacy in showing its want of 
justification by a formal process of ratiocination, 
but rid yourself of implying it you cannot. We 
may call this ultimate postulate by whatever term 
we please. We may speak of it as a " somewhat," 
an "it," if we will, as that which feels and thinks 
in us. But there is no gain in this. Whatever 
we may say, what we mean is always an " I " 
feeling and thinking. Schopenhauer, in terming 
the pure Subject " will " or " will to live," was 
in a sense justified, and what is substantially 
his position we find recently adopted by various 
writers as the latest word on the philosophic 
problem. (Cf. F. C. S. Schiller, William James, 
passim, also Hugo Munsterberg in " Psychology 
and Life," &c.) When we hear the determina- 



54 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

tions of consciousness (which we term in their 
totality the object-world) described as au fond 
"practical postulates," when we read of the will 
as being the real subject, and of object as being 
act of will, we see plainly that we are following 
on the lines of the Welt als Wille, and even on 
those of the Fichtean philosophy in its later 
form. As above said, whether we use the term 
"will" for the pure subject as such, or reserve 
this term for its primary function, what we mean 
is the same. It is the primordial apperceiving 
principle that is meant, as opposed to the thought- 
forms in which its fundamental opposition within 
itself, the object, becomes realised. It is em- 
phatically the alogical and the potential which 
the logical and the actual presuppose, in the com- 
position of the real world. 

Those who endeavour to lay before the uniniti- 
ated the general principle of philosophic Idealism, 

_ „ _ that consciousness embraces all things, 

Fall8,ci6S Oi 

popular are usually confronted with some such 

scientific popular observations as the following: : 
cpiticism 

" Consciousness is an attribute of living 

beings, and is only an incident in the reality of 
things. A blow on the head will make me un- 
conscious, but the world goes on just the same." 
If the interlocutor is a modern up-to-date physio- 
logist, he will, of course, point out the obvious 
truism that consciousness, as the attribute of 
living beings, is indissolubly bound up with the 
brain and nervous system, and here, confounding 



MODERN IDEALISM 55 

the physiological and psychological standpoints, 
will probably describe consciousness as a func- 
tion of the brain. He will duly expound how 
the lobes of the brain " think " — he means, of 
course, " cerebrate " — and give us the benefit of 
sundry other established commonplaces of modern 
science, which, in themselves, no one worth con- 
sidering calls in question in the present day, 
whatever exception may sometimes be taken to 
the phraseology in which they are stated, or to 
the metaphysical inferences fastened upon them. 
The non-philosophical man, whether common- 
sensible or scientific, cannot understand that 
philosophic Idealism does not in the least im- 
pugn the premises of scientific Materialism, so 
long as the latter keeps within the four corners 
of its own problem and does not make poaching 
excursions into the domains of metaphysic, theory 
of knowledge, or psychology, attempting to trans- 
late its own abstract point of view, its own solu- 
tion, of its own problem, into a solution of the 
wider problem with which philosophy deals. The 
representative of the philosophic point of view, 
after hearing his scientific or common-sense 
friend's exposition with due respect, might put 
to him the following : " What, then, are brain 
lobes, nervous systems, animal organisms them- 
selves, other than modifications of physical 
substance, and what is physical substance but 
resistant extension, and what does resistant ex- 
tension mean save a modification of perception ; 



56 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

in other words, the content of consciousness, 
possible or actual ? " The friend may be posed 
for a moment, but he will probably remain un- 
convinced that there is anything fundamentally 
wrong in his initial attitude, which consists in a 
confusion between consciousness-in-general, the 
ultima ratio of philosophy, and consciousness 
viewed as a particular fact, that is, abstracted 
and isolated as a concomitant of certain physio- 
logical conditions and functions of living beings. 

Even the psychological view is, properly speak- 
ing, abstract. Our own mind is regarded from 
the standpoint of psychology as object among 
other objects of a certain class or kind, not as 
Subject in the true sense of the word. Abstrac- 
tion is made even in psychology from the con- 
ditions of consciousness-in-general, and the mind 
is treated as an independent somewhat or thing. 
It is torn up from its roots as a particular deter- 
mination or content of the potentiality of all 
consciousness per se, and is held in solution as 
a more or less isolated fact. 

We have already dealt in the course of the 
present chapter with the priority of elements 
constituting this " permanent possibility of con- 
sciousness " (to adapt Mill's phrase). This ques- 
tion is the chief point with those thinkers who 
take their stand on the only tenable philosophical 
position, according to which the object-world is 
nothing other than the content of a possible 
consciousness, of which position the development 



MODERN IDEALISM 57 

of philosophy in Germany, from Kant to Hegel, 
is typical. Kant attempted to place these elements 
side by side. With Fichte it was from the outset 
uncertain whether the " ego," which was his 
fundamental postulate, was conceived as the pure 
form of thought or as will, that is, as alogical 
impulse, though in the later period of his system 
the latter view seems to predominate. With 
Schelling this position becomes further accen- 
tuated, and by Schopenhauer it is definitely made 
the corner-stone of his philosophical construction. 
Hegel, on the contrary, is the consistent apostle 
of the thought-form or the logical. Reality is 
for him nothing but the system of all possible 
thought-forms, of all logical relations. These 
various positions we find cropping up at the 
present day, both in Great Britain and on the 
Continent. But we may note the fact that, 
whatever view be adopted on this point, all 
prominent thinkers are practically at one in 
occupying the standing-ground that, let the nearer 
definition be what it may, the absolute is at least 
identical with consciousness as suck. 



CHAPTER III 

THE ALOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL AS 
ULTIMATE ELEMENTS 

We have seen in the preceding chapters that 
the most comprehensive view from which the 
world can be regarded is that of a system of 
modifications of consciousness possible and 
actual. This point of view will be familiar to 
every one in the least acquainted with the litera- 
ture of modern philosophic Idealism. Here we 
have the philosophical standpoint par excellence. 
It is different, as we have pointed out, alike from 
the common-sense, and from the scientific, apper- 
ception of the world, and cannot be reduced to any 
terms wider than itself. The position occupied 
by philosophic thought in its strict sense is 
therefore ultimate, since, while all reality can be 
formulated in its terms, these terms cannot in 
the last resort be brought under any higher 
principle of explanation than themselves. The 
task of philosophy in its technical application 
(Theory of knowledge and Metaphysic) is the 
analysis of the conditions at the foundation of the 

conscious synthesis, for the latter is the frame- 

58 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 59 

work of the system of our experience, namely, 
of those modifications of consciousness that all 
others presuppose, and hence that form the warp 
and woof of the world of our knowledge and 
a fortiori of its translation into the abstract 
terms of reflective thought. Now, we have found 
that conscious experience implies in the last 
resort (1) a potentiality of knowing, which we call 
subject ; (2) a potentiality of known-ness, which we 
call object ; and (3) a determinate relation in- 
volving at once the distinction of the one from 
the other, and the identification of the one in 
the other. Here we have the elementary syn- 
thesis discernible in all immediate apprehension 
or thisness. The object, we can see, is ultimately 
no more than the subject's own modification, 
while, similarly, the subject is no more than an 
abstraction apart from its modification in the 
object. In this relation of reciprocal distinction 
and identification we have the primary germ of 
the logical, or of the form of experience in con- 
tradistinction to the two previous terms implied 
therein (its matter), which are therefore non- 
logical (alogical). The subject as alogical is 
practically identifiable with what in theory of 
knowledge and psychology appears as feeling 
and will. 

Hence in analysing the above ultimate ele- 
ments or aspects of consciousness, which, as we 
have already remarked (p. 37), reappear in a 
disguised form on every plane of experience, 



60 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

however complex its conditions may be, we have 
come upon a salient distinction that interpene- 
trates the whole of reality. This distinction, 
which has already been forestalled in the previous 
chapter, I have expressed by the words the 
" alogical" and the "logical" elements in ex- 
perience. The antithesis in question coincides 
in the main, although not entirely, with the 
Aristotelian antitheses of matter and form, and of 
potentiality and actuality. Alike in the elements 
of consciousness and in the content of conscious- 
ness, be that however far removed in point of 
concrete complexity from those elements, we can 
trace this salient antithesis or its derivatives. 
The history of philosophy in its more vital 
bearings, as we have seen, mainly hinges upon 
this antithesis and upon the relative importance 
assigned to its terms respectively. From Plato 
downwards the tendency has been to hypostatise 
the logical at the expense of the alogical. We 
have criticised this doctrine chiefly with reference 
to its most thorough-going and consistent ex- 
pression, namely, in the Hegelian philosophy, that 
"ballet of bloodless categories," as Professor 
Bradley has called it. 

It may be well here, before entering upon any 
more detailed discussion of the subject, to 
enumerate the principal modes in which the 
aforesaid antithesis manifests itself. Quoad the 
elements of consciousness, we find will and sen- 
sation or feeling, as the alogical in antithesis to 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 61 

the thought-form as the logical. 1 Quoad the 
content of common-sense consciousness we have 
the same opposition in the shape of the becoming 
of that which is not, and of a completed reality 
as given. The primary antithesis of sensation 
to thought becomes the starting-point of certain 
leading antitheses in the concrete world that we 
may term modes of the primary antithesis of the 
alogical and logical. The chief of these may be 
enumerated as the antitheses of particular and 
universal, being and appearance {phenomenon) , 
infinite and finite, and chance and law. In 
addition to these leading antitheses there are 
subordinate ones, which are also in the last resort 
resolvable into the fundamental antithesis of 
alogical and logical. To take two instances only, 
and those from psychology, there is the antithesis 
of instinct and reason, or again of action from 
blind impulse, and action from an intelligent 
recognition of means and end. 

The antithesis of particular and universal lies 
at the root of all experience whatsoever, of all 
definite apperception of reality. From p aP tieular 
Plato to Kant the blind "sense-mani- and 
fold" has been repeatedly opposed to universal » 
the" intelligible principle ; in Plato to the idea, 
in Kant to the constitutive category. Recently 



1 I am far from regarding the opposition of sensation or feeling 
to will as ultimate, any more than that of its correlate object to 
subject. It seems to me that feeling might admissibly be defined 
as static will, and will as dynamic feeling. 



62 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

(cf. Professor Ward, article " Psychology," Ency. 
Brit., ninth edition, and elsewhere) exception 
has been taken to regarding the matter of sense 
as a discrete manifold at all ; in other words, to 
introducing the notion of number, in favour of 
regarding it as an indefinite continuum. This 
latter view, however, will not alter the fact that 
the first modification of this sense-continuum, by 
its reduction under temporal and spacial relations, 
is in the direction of changing the indefinite unity 
of the continuum into a numerical infinity. It is, 
indeed, as such that it is immediately distinguish- 
able, in the synthesis of consciousness, from the 
system of categories under which it is apper- 
ceived, and hence which give it its reality. 
Every apperceptive unity, every thought-form 
or logical universal, presupposes an infinite num- 
ber of particulars as potentially coming under it. 
Hence although in the last resort the matter 
of sense may perhaps be properly postulated as 
a continuum, yet for the purpose of a working 
theory of knowledge it seems to me that we 
cannot avoid treating it from the old point of 
view as a sense-manifold. It is this sense-mani- 
fold in space and time that gives us the particular 
and individual as opposed to the universal — the 
first being the matter, the second the form, of 
reality. This sense-manifold supplies the par- 
ticular element in experience, and the particular 
itself, as thus given, has two modes, an extensive 
and an intensive, or, as they might otherwise be 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 63 

expressed, a quantitative and a qualitative. As 
extensive, particularity is given as numerical 
infinity ; as intensive, as a finite unity — as 
thisness. 

In speaking, or even thinking, of particularity 
and its modes, as in all other cases of the alogical, 
we are of course compelled to regard it under the 
form of the concept. As thought of in reflection, 
it necessarily takes on the form of thought. But 
this must not blind us to the fact that in its "first 
intention," to use the scholastic phrase, as a basal 
element of reality itself, it is essentially antithetic 
to the thought-form. 

Infinite numerical repetition in space and 
time, and a correlative finite unity in immediate 
apprehension or thisness, are, then, the hall- 
marks of the alogical particular, as opposed to 
the logical universal. The universal, on the 
other hand, as distinguished therefrom, is always 
a unity without a thisness. It is never immediate, 
but always mediate; in other words, a formal unity, 
as such, independent of time (" time apart "). 

The logical universal has three forms, the 
class-name, the abstract quality, and the relation 
pure and simple. Let us take them 
in order. The universal in its first £he todeal 
form may descend from the most 
rarefied regions of abstraction in a succession 
of gradations towards the concrete. But how- 
ever low it descends, it always remains universal ; 
that is, a thought-unity without a sense-thisness, 



64 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

and hence per se can never touch the concrete. 
This we have already pointed out in passing, in 
the last chapter. It remains eternally an ab- 
straction. The universal terms "spaniel" and 
" cricket-ball " are, strictly speaking, no nearer 
to the concrete thing with its particularity — to 
wit, its potentially infinite numerical repetition 
and its actual thisness — than is " pure being " or 
" object " (in general), as universal terms. Both 
alike are abstract notions. With the other form 
of the universal, abstract quality, the antithesis 
to the particular is of itself sufficiently obvious. 
A quality (attribute, property, adjective, &c.) 
apart from an object into which it enters can 
plainly never be anything else than a pure 
abstraction. That the class-name universals 
"dog," "horse," "tree," in so far as they have 
no thisness, are no less abstractions, is, as just 
said, equally true, though not quite so obvious 
at first sight. Finally, the relation-universal is 
the basis of the concept-forms, which are pre- 
eminently termed categories, namely, those 
concept-forms that enter into the construction 
of experience itself, the Kantian categories of 
the "Transcendental Analytic" or the leading 
categories of the Hegelian logic, &c. Of these 
the principal are, substance (unity of qualities), 
cause, reciprocal action. It is, however, un- 
necessary to say anything more here concern- 
ing this leading department of the logical, except 
to point out that we call this the relational form 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 65 

pure and simple, inasmuch as it has no content 
save that of the relation itself, whereas the class- 
name and the (adjectival) quality respectively, 
have a content other than mere relation, namely, 
the indefinite sense-reference. 

It was Kant who pointed out that primarily 
time and secondarily space were the connecting 
links between the thought-universal and 
the sense-particular. In the loose Ian- S p™ e e e an 
guage of popular philosophy, space and 
time are often referred to as, according to Kant, 
" forms of thought." This only illustrates the 
confusion of the popular mind on philosophical 
questions. If there is one thing Kant made 
clear, it is that space and time are not forms of 
thought, but forms of sense. Hence, formal as 
they are, they are through and through alogical, 
and thus have no direct affinity with the cate- 
gories, which are through and through logical. 
On the basis of the principle of space and time 
being forms of sense-perception, Kant showed 
that number or infinite repetition, temporal or 
spacial, as the quantitative mode of the particular, 
is that which mediates between the concept-form 
and the particular instance in its immediate or 
qualitative mood as thisness} The category 
realises itself in a possible infinitude of par- 
ticulars in time and space. Particularity and 

1 Plato seems to have had an adumbration of this when he 
speaks of " number " as coming between the world of sense and 
the world of ideas. 

E 



66 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

individuation has always been regarded by 
thinkers, from Plato and Aristotle through the 
Schoolmen down to Kant, as pre-eminently the 
potential factor or matter, which the concept 
informs. For Plato it was the non-existent 
element of sense ; it was the blurring or con- 
fusion of the Logical (the Platonic Idea). What 
we find, however, on analysis of the conditions 
of experience is, that this alogical element of 
particularity is as essential a principle in the 
completed synthesis as the universal itself in 
all its forms. (This is a point which the modern 
Platonists, the orthodox Hegelians, overlook.) 
But, on the other hand, it is no less true that 
the particular, the element over and above the 
universalising thought-form, has just as little 
meaning apart from this thought-form as the 
thought-form has apart from it. (This is what 
the Associational school overlook.) The con- 
tention of the associational Empiricist, therefore, 
that the many alone can be said to exist, and 
that the one that is discoverable therein is no 
more than a psychological abstraction, is just as 
invalid as the Platonic universalia ante rem, 
according to which the universal or conceptual 
element has an independent existence apart from 
the manifold of particular instances in which it 
is realised. The elements of sense-manyness 
and conceptual one-ness respectively are equally 
unreal apart from their synthetic union. Neither 
is per se more or less unreal than the other. 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 67 

The two modes of particularity are correlative. 
The qualitative thisness (or simple immediacy) 
is unstable, and this instability is cor- 
rected by the possibility of repetition i^J ^g 
ad infinitum in time. The two modes 
may also be viewed respectively as potential and 
actual. The infinite repetition of the sense-world 
is, of course, purely potential ; the thisness, on 
the contrary, may be defined as pure actuality. 
Time and space themselves indeed are in the 
last resort simple abstract forms of thisness. 
Kant obviously meant as much when he spoke 
of them as forms of sensibility as opposed to the 
pure intelligibility of the concept-form. This- 
ness, as such, the immediate conscious moment, 
always appears on reflection as the centre of 
infinite time. We speak of the " flow of time," 
but how is that flow to be regarded, as from 
past to future, or from future to past? Ought 
we to conceive of time as carrying us ahead 
along with it, or as meeting us and going by 
us? The time-content, as subordinated to the 
category of cause and effect, must undoubtedly 
be considered as moving from the past to the 
future, from that which has happened to that 
which shall happen ; but, from another point of 
view, we are also compelled to regard the future 
as approaching us. Language itself indicates 
this. We speak of a time that is coming, and 
of a time past and gone. There would, there- 
fore, seem to be a double flow of time and its 



68 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

content. Viewed under the category of causa- 
tion, time and its content undoubtedly flow 
from past to future ; but, looked at in another 
way, we are as undoubtedly meeting time and 
its content. The actual moment of conscious- 
ness, whence its content derives the thisness, is 
the point of contact between these two flows ; 
it may be called literally a metaphysical point. 
Every given moment presupposes a past moment. 
Past time and future time, alike non-existent — 
non-actual — in themselves, are the essential ele- 
ments of the actual moment. Past time and 
future time are alike, in a sense, potential. The 
now, the actual moment of consciousness, which 
is nothing but at once the point of contact and 
of separation between them, and which hence 
appears always as at the middle of time, alone 
represents the actual. The content of past time 
we describe as real, notwithstanding that it is 
not realised, or even realisable, in any empirical 
consciousness. We say that Caesar's crossing 
of the Rubicon is a real fact of history ; yet 
this event, by the conditions of time, can never 
become actualised — can never acquire a thisness 
— for any intelligence. Similarly the events that 
happened to us yesterday we say are real by 
the same conditions of time, although they also 
cannot as events enter into any actual moment 
of consciousness. But there is an important 
distinction between the two cases. The events 
of yesterday, though no more actualisable than 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 69 

Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon, are neverthe- 
less contained within the limits of an individual 
memory-synthesis, whereas Caesar's exploits are 
not. Now the question arises : Is the attri- 
bute real which involves, in the former case, 
inclusion within the limits of a memory-synthesis, 
having its point d'appui in the present moment 
of immediacy or tkisness, also applied in the 
latter case and for the same reason ? If so, it 
may possibly have some corroborative bearing 
upon the speculation we shall have occasion to 
discuss later on. (See Chapter IV.) 

So much for the past as time-mode, but what 
of the future as time-mode ? The reaching for- 
ward towards the future is as much 
an element in the actuality of the modes 
present moment in its tkisness as the ( eon - 
reaching backward towards the past. 
(1) There is no actual, there is no cognisable, 
now of consciousness, the content of which 
is not ultimately analysable into a series. An 
indivisible metaphysical point of filled time is, 
strictly speaking, inconceivable. (2) But, para- 
dox as it may seem, one element in this com- 
posite now is already future. The element of mere 
outlooking, of pure actuality or tkisness, is future, 
quoad the content that it grips in its outlook. 
In this sense we may say that the past is only 
known by the future, the synthesis of the two 
constituting the present moment, the mini-mum 
cognisabile or metaphysical point of concrete con- 



70 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

sciousness. The future, therefore, though not 
itself real, is nevertheless as much a constitu- 
tive moment of actual consciousness as the past. 
Further, viewing the potential content of the 
future under the category of causation, it is seen to 
be really implicit in the content of the past. The 
actual moment above referred to of the union in 
synthesis of the two elements, the immediate past 
and the immediate future, may be compared to an 
eddy produced by two tides at their confluence. 1 

The antithesis of being and appearance is an 
extremely important one, especially for specu- 
Bei and lative thought. I must premise that 
appear- now and always I use the word 
anee. « being," not as synonymous with 

reality, but exclusively as referring to the that 
in the object in contradistinction to the what. 
The that, or, as I term it, the being, is purely 
alogical ; while the what, which coincides with 
the appearance, always involves a relation, even 
if only in so far as it implies the relation of 
distinction, as in the case of bare quality. 
Reality, again, is constituted exclusively by the 
synthesis of these two elements — (i) the being, 
the that, of the object, and (2) the what, its 

1 There is a somewhat logomachous sense, it may be observed, 
in which time, as the source of flowing, cannot be described as 
itself fluent ; just as motion cannot be spoken of as itself moving. 
But in each case this is, I need scarcely say, a mere verbal quibble. 
Time means the form of change or flow in the principle of this- 
ness, just as motion means the form of change of an extended 
body in space. 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 71 

essence, manifestation, or appearance. These 
two elements can be distinguished in reflection, 
but neither of them per se is concrete, that is, 
can become object ; in their synthesis alone is 
reality given. In the same way I distinguish 
between " being " and " existence." Existence is 
synonymous with reality, with being plus appear- 
ance, with "that" plus "what." Appearance 
without being is not real or existent, but neither 
is being without appearance real or existent. 

Now, what do we mean when we use the 
verb-substantive ? What do we mean when we 

say that something is ? We mean 

J T , . f , . Imputation 

more, 1 take it, than that it exists ofsubjeeti- 

as mere object, even as object for vitytothe 
all consciousness. When we say that 
a thing is, when we affirm being of it, I think 
we impute to it implicitly the primary and 
fundamental element of all conscious experience, 
namely, subjectivity, or that which we can only 
otherwise define in words as the potentiality of 
feeling, willing, and thinking. This principle 
of subjectivity (ego) we postulate immediately 
as the that which is manifested in the pheno- 
menon that "appears" as a modification of our 
perceptive consciousness. It is this alogical 
element that we postulate as the groundwork 
of the appearance with its logical categories and 
implications. In this way the subject is trans- 
lated over into the object, and serves as the 
basis of the latter's reality. The object is, in 



72 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

an undefined way, assumed to involve the prin- 
ciple of subjectivity within itself. It, of course, 
essentially involves, as part of its phenomenal 
reality, also logical categories. 

This has its bearing on the latest formulation 
of the Materialism of modern science, which in 
definite terms attributes " a subjective 
conscious side" to all physical substance from 
and the the hypothetical atom to the living 
Sfj e0n " animal organism. It is common to 
speak of inorganic physical substance 
as " blind unconscious matter." This is, no doubt, 
all right so far as it goes, but it is apt to be 
forgotten that the unconscious is not the extra- 
conscious ; unconsciousness is not outside the 
realm of subjectivity or of possible consciousness. 
For example, we speak with perfect correctness 
of a stone as unconscious ; yet, in so far as we 
postulate "being" of a stone, we are postulating, 
as I contend, a possibility of consciousness in 
the stone — in a word, the stone is for us un- 
conscious, but not &r/r#-conscious. An abstrac- 
tion alone is extra-conscious in this sense, to wit, 
that while it of course enters, as an element, 
into the object or content v of consciousness — 
otherwise it would be nothing at all — yet it 
contains no principle of subjectivity within itself. 
Being, or subjectivity, cannot be postulated of 
it. We should not say of an isosceles triangle, 
of the colour green, or of the virtue magna- 
nimity, that it was unconscious, as we should of 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 73 

the stone, for the simple reason that we recognise 
these abstract notions immediately as in them- 
selves, not, like the stone, ^conscious, but extra- 
conscious, in the sense that they cannot possibly 
contain within themselves the principle of sub- 
jectivity or of potential consciousness. They 
are simply abstractions (at most, elements of ob- 
jectivity) within an actual consciousness, deriv- 
ing their sole validity therefrom. No special 
reality, no physical object, on the other hand, 
can be thought of as extra-conscious, namely, 
as outside the realm of subjectivity or possible 
consciousness, though it may very well be 
conceived of as unconscious, that is, as not 
actually conscious. 1 

In the thought and language of common-sense, 
no less than in that of philosophical speculation, 

the being of a thing will be found on 

. . 1 i-i-i Being and 

examination to mean the alogical side appearanee 

imputed to it, the potential element further 

• • GonsidGPGci 

in its constitution, in contradistinction 

to the logical determinations accruing to it as 

actualised phenomenon. For example, a delirious 

patient in the ward of a hospital sees a skeleton 

1 It is curious to notice, in connection with the above, that the 
limited and naive language of primitive man scarcely contains the 
verb " to be," some verb signifying " to live " taking its place. 
Thus instead of saying, " The axe is in the hut," the savage would 
say, "Axe live in hut." The so-called verb-substantive is the 
outcome of a series of distinctions drawn by an instinctive meta- 
physic. The whole theory of fetichism, common to primitive 
man, is also in accordance with this view. 



74 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

looking over the shoulder of the doctor who is 
at the foot of the bed. Now, both the doctor 
and the chair on which he is sitting are said 
to be real in the sense that " being " is imputed 
to them, while the skeleton is called an illusion, 
since "being" is denied of it. The distinction 
here does not lie in the actualised appearance, 
the phenomenon, for qua phenomena the doctor, 
his chair, the bed-post, and the skeleton may- 
be equally good. It lies in the alogical, the 
potential, element, which is assumed as at the 
basis of the one, while it is absent in the other. 
This element it is which, involving, as it does, 
an infinity of implications, is meant when the 
object thought is said to be real. When we 
speak of the "being" of a thing, we mean precisely 
that element in it which is not appearance. The 
appearance (phenomenon) is regarded merely as 
the sign of the "being" ; it is the latter side to 
which the infinite implications of all real objects 
in the world-order are relegated as their ultimate 
source. Similarly, in the word "reality," used 
as in common parlance, in opposition to " illusion," 
we have the stress laid upon the being-element 
in the synthesis which the word properly speaking 
connotes. The reality of the object means that 
behind any and all its appearances there is an 
inexhaustible continuum constituting a reservoir 
of possible manifestations indicated by the word 
^ being," as postulated with regard to it. The 
antithesis of noumenon and phenomenon as 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 75 

applied to the object is based on the above 
distinction. 

It is often said that the crucial distinction 
between a reality and an illusion consists in the 
fact that the former can be assigned 
a definite place in the articulated *y S a t em. aS 
system of things we call the universe 
— that it fits into the causal and reciprocal con- 
nection involved in consciousness-in-general — 
whereas to the latter no such place can be 
assigned, since it does not fit into the system 
of consciousness-in-general, but is the exclusive 
product of the individual consciousness considered 
as particular. There is, no doubt, a great deal 
of justice in this view ; but while conceding all 
its just claims, I still cannot admit that the 
assumption of an alogical basis, a being (in the 
sense in which the word is here used), is any 
the less necessary to constitute an appearance 
real as opposed to illusory. To constitute a 
given perception real as opposed to hallucina- 
tional we postulate, I should say, that it is not 
exhausted in the appearance, but that there is 
an alogical remainder behind, and the fact of 
our conceding to it this alogical remainder, or 
being, forces us to separate it from our individual 
consciousness, and to regard it as defined by 
the categories that determine the world for all 
possible experience, that is, for consciousness- 
in-general. Hence arises the independence of 
the object. 



76 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

The antithesis of infinite and finite is an im- 
portant mode of the cardinal antithesis with which 
this chapter deals, namely, that between 

Infinite foe alogical and the logical. Infinity, 

and finite. f . s . Jl 

properly speaking, accrues invariably to 

the alogical. I am aware that a distinction has 
been drawn between the true and the false infinite, 
the latter term being applied to the infinite of the 
sense-manifold. On the other hand, from Plato 
downwards, the concept-form, the eternal idea, is 
supposed to stand for the true infinite. The 
logical universal, however, is in its very essence 
^-fining, considered as such. The infinity that 
can be predicted of it falls, strictly speaking, to 
the limitless repetition of instances that it covers 
— in other words, it falls to its antithesis, the 
particular. The concept-form as such is nothing 
if not a principle of limitation. On the other 
hand, the subject as such — sensibility, will — has- 
no such principle of limitation. JHIence the im- 
possibility of finding an adequate' formula in the 
terms of reflective thought, whose medium is the 
logical concept, for anything involving infinity. 
Thought-activity, being in its very nature af- 
finitive, glances off the element of m-finity in 
every judgment it makes. No judgment, that is 
to say, can express an infinite content. The 
element of infinity in the content inevitably eludes 
it, just as does the element of particularity, or the 
element of " being," since they are all of them 
modes of the alogical, and hence antithetical to 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 77 

the judgment, which is nothing if not through 
and through logical. 

But the objection may be taken here that the 
alogical in general, no less than in its special 
modes, is a notion, that it has a conceptual char- 
acter, and that otherwise it could not be spoken 
of. This point has been already dealt with, but 
it may be well to recur to it here, in view of its 
apparent plausibility. In order to enter into 
abstract .thought at all, these alogical elements 
must be indicable under the universal form of 
thinking. This indicability under the concept- 
form, as notion, does not mean that the alogical, 
in any of its modes, enters per se into abstract 
thought. Herein lies the kernel.'of the distinction 
between truth and reality ; in its highest form, 
between philosophy and life. Truth, at least in 
its scientific or philosophic sense, is always 
abstract ; all its determinations are, strictly 
speaking, concept-forms merely. When, how- 
ever, abstract thought attempts to indicate the 
alogical, per se, in contradistinction to expres- 
sing relations between distinguishable alogical 
elements, the result is a pseudo - concept or 
notion^ which reveals its inadequacy as soon as 
we press it or seek to draw conclusions from 
it as though it were a true concept. We then 
become involved in all sorts of antinomies, con- 
tradictions, and unthinkabilities. We shall have 
an illustration of this directly, when we come to 
discuss the antithesis of chance and law. But it 



78 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

may further be objected : If the antithesis be so 
thorough-going as is implied, how can the alogical 
element be even indicated in the abstract thought 
of reflection? How can they meet together at 
all, even to this extent? The answer is that, 
thorough-going as is the antithesis as such, both 
its sides find their unity, their common ground, 
in consciousness as a whole, and in the Subject, 
which is the root-principle of consciousness. The 
Subject, primarily alogical though it be, creates 
nevertheless in its self-differentiation as subject- 
object that element of relativity necessary to all 
experience of which the abstract thought of reflec- 
tion is the highest expression. 

We come now to perhaps the most popular 

mode of the cardinal antithesis of alogical and 

logical — that in which it most effec- 

anlnaw. tivel y strikes the " man in tne street" 
— i.e. the antithesis between chance 
and law. It is a favourite saw of popular 
Pallogism — one of the few occasions on which 
the philosophical theory of Pallogism appears in 
popular thought — that there is no such thing as 
chance in the world. Every happening in time, 
it is alleged, is capable of reduction to law and to 
some cause, so that an intelligence able to seize, 
in one eternal glance, the entire universe at this 
moment could construct therefrom the whole past 
and the whole future. Chance, it is said, is only 
the name that we give to our imperfect know- 
ledge. Now, let us see how far this is true and 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 79 

where it breaks down. It will be observed that 
we have here to deal with the infinite particular 
and its modes. We are concerned with infinite 
time, with infinite space, and with infinite colloca- 
tions of matter-in-motion, that is, with infinite 
collocations of the content of time and space. As 
we (have just seen, infinity is a mode of the 
alogical. Infinity implies matter, not form ; poten- 
tiality, not actuality. Now, to start with the 
popular metaphor of an "eternal glance." An 
eternal glance may mean one of two things ; it 
may mean the apprehension of the content of an 
infinite time and of an infinite space, namely, of 
the particular as infinite repetition, or it may 
mean an "intelligible apperception" that has 
nothing to do with time or its content. Since, 
however, we are dealing with particular happen- 
ings in a time-process, it is quite clear that it 
cannot be used in the latter sense. It must 
mean, therefore, as used in connection with 
chance and law, the immediate apprehension, as 
tkisness, of an infinite time - content. But an 
immediate and actual apprehension of an infinite 
time-series is clearly self-contradictory. A limit- 
less time-content plainly requires limitless time 
for its apprehension. Even if recourse be had to 
the second sense in which the phrase " eternal 
glance " may be used, not alone would this be, as 
above shown, inapplicable to the problem under 
discussion, but it would be no less a self-con- 
tradictory absurdity than the one above referred 



8o THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

to. Neither of them represents the possibility 
of a real synthesis. In the former sense it is 
attempted to ascribe reality to the alogical per se, 
while excluding the logical. In the latter sense, 
the still greater absurdity, if possible, is com- 
mitted of attempting to ascribe reality to the 
logical per se. In either case, we are hyposta- 
tising an abstraction, forgetting that the real 
necessarily implies the synthesis of both these 
cardinal elements of consciousness. The real is 
invariably and necessarily a synthesis of at least 
these two elements within consciousness ; it can- 
not be reduced to a simpler expression. 

As in the case of the alogical modes that we 
have already considered, so here in that of chance, 

The element t ^ ie a l°gi ca l s ^ e °f tne antithesis under 
of infinity consideration — as opposed to law, or the 
in ehanee. i gj ca i g^e — the element of infinity in- 
directly enters. Quantitative particularity implies 
unlimited repetition. " Being" implies infinity, in 
so far as it involves an infinite possibility of re- 
lations. For instance, in the example given of 
reality and illusion, of the too-too solid flesh and 
broadcloth of the doctor (or the solid wood or brass 
of the bed-post), on the one hand, and the airy 
nothingness of the alleged skeleton on the other, 
we have said that of the one being was pre- 
dicated, as underlying the appearance, and of 
the other being was denied. 1 It was this fact 

1 The illusory character of the skeleton, we may remind the 
reader, would in no wise be affected by its being seen by more 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 81 

that the one set of appearances was assumed to 
have its basis in " being," while the other was as- 
sumed to have no such basis, that justified us in 
characterising the one as real, the other as illu- 
sory. But we shall see on closer examination 
that this means, further, that the reality of the 
one set of appearances, by virtue of the element 
of being (self-subsistence, subjectivity) ascribed 
to it, yet again implies an infinity of possible 
relations with the whole universe of appearances, 
conceived similarly as grounded in being. In 
other words, reality is taken to involve a con- 
nected system of relations possible and actual 
(to wit, a universe), which are expressed in reflec- 
tion by certain determining categories. Here 
again we have an expression of the opposition 
of the alogical and the logical. In the present 
antithesis, that of chance and law, we are chiefly 
concerned with the category expressing the con- 
nection governing temporal and spacial change — 
that of cause-and-effect. This represents the 
logical side of the antithesis, or law, as we term 
it ; the other, the alogical side, or chance. 
Chance may be defined as that element in the 
reality of change, that is, in the synthesis of 
events, which is irreducible to law or the causal 
category. Now, popular Pallogism adopts the 
line that in the last resort there is, in the real 

than one person. For twenty patients in the same ward to see the 
skeleton would not make it one whit more real than if only a single 
patient saw it. 

F 



82 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

world no alogical remainder left over, but that the 
infinitude of particulars must be assumed to be 
reducible to the logical category, the law of cause. 
Here, as elsewhere, the fallacy of regarding the 
logical as capable of entirely absorbing the alo- 
gical, is best brought home to the mind by point- 
ing out that the element of infinity in the alogical 
precludes its comprehension, as such, under the 
limitations of the concept-form. In every real 
process, at whatever stage we choose to take as 
our starting-point, although there is much in it 
which is perfectly reducible to law, yet there is 
always a remainder left over that cannot be 
reduced to law, or the relation of cause and effect 
(in contradistinction to the subordinate one of 
mere antecedent and consequent). Every matter 
of/act, every event or happening in time, is con- 
ditioned as consequent, not alone by one infinite 
series, but by an infinite number of such series 
of events, each event of which might have 
happened otherwise. Thus in tracing back any 
event, we are confronted at every step with an 
infinite vista of converging rays of circumstances, 
without the occurrence of any of which the parti- 
cular event in question would not have happened 
— or at least not in the precise way in which it 
did happen. But each of these events is yet, in 
its turn, similarly conditioned by infinite vistas of 
events without which it would not have happened, 
and so on. 

It is difficult to render one's meaning ade- 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 83 

quately clear by illustration, since in the nature 
of the case one can always spin out such an illus- 
tration indefinitely without exhausting xheprin- 
it. However, as an effort in this direc- eipleillus- 
tion, let us suppose a certain student, tFated * 
Julius Schmidt, performing on the fifteenth day 
of July 1906, at 11 a.m., in the laboratory of the 
Zurich Polytechnic, the familiar chemical experi- 
ment of combining oxygen and hydrogen so as to 
produce water. The causal element is apparent. 
The combination of the two gases — which have 
been mixed in due proportion of volume (2 of 
hydrogen to 1 of oxygen) according to the 
chemical formula, that is, according to law — de- 
termined by the electric spark, is the cause of the 
water being produced. This is not, however, the 
whole event, but an abstract element in the event. 
The event, as concrete, as happening in the real 
world, embraces a great deal more than this. 
When water is chemically produced in this world, 
there is an agent, at a particular moment of time, 
and in a given place, effecting the combination. 
Now, that this should happen on the fifteenth day 
of July 1906, at 11 a.m., on the particular spot of 
the earth's surface named, cannot, I contend, be 
treated as a pure case of causality. There is no 
chance in the production of the water, once the 
conditions are given ; but that the conditions 
should be so given is a matter utterly irreducible 
to causation, attempt it which way we will, for 
every condition was empirically contingent on 



84 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

another condition, and so on to infinity. It is a 
case of (particular) antecedent and consequent, 
but not of (universal) cause and effect. Each 
condition might have been absent, or might have 
been associated with totally different circum- 
stances. That Julius Schmidt was in the labo- 
ratory at the hour named was consequent on the 
failure of a friend to keep an appointment with 
him on the previous evening. This was contin- 
gent on the said friend having met another friend 
whom he had not seen for a long time, and this 
again on something else, and so on to infinity. 
Had the friend kept his appointment, Schmidt 
would have had such an attack of " Kater" that 
he would not have been in the laboratory at all. 
The fact that Julius Schmidt is in the laboratory 
under any circumstances rests upon the fact of his 
studying practical chemistry, which is again con- 
tingent upon the circumstances that his father's 
failure in business necessitates his applying him- 
self to something that holds out to him an early 
prospect of remuneration, and to the further cir- 
cumstance that, owing to his father's personal 
influence with a firm of colour-manufacturers, the 
desired field was afforded by applied chemistry. 
The existence of the laboratory in Zurich was 
contingent upon the existence of the polytechnic 
school and of a university, and that again upon 
other combinations of historical circumstances. 
Once more, the existence of Julius Schmidt him- 
self is contingent upon the meeting of his father 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 85 

and mother at an evening party many years before 
the date of the experiment related, and upon their 
subsequent marriage. It is unnecessary to go 
further. Although in each of these events, taken 
absolutely and viewed as isolated, it is possible 
to trace the category of cause, yet, when con- 
sidered as concrete, as a focussing of an infinite 
series of events proceeding from "all quarters," 
there is an element of contingency, of chance, of 
alogicality, in short, utterly irreducible to causality, 
but which forms, nevertheless, a part of the very 
essence of the event as real. 

The point here insisted upon may easily be 
illustrated in a more striking manner if a case 
be supposed where a serious event, an 

event of national or international im- .^ 1 no ^ ie ^. 

. . i-i • • 1 illustration, 

portance, hinges directly upon a trivial 

matter. For instance, imagine a journalist A. in 
the act of walking down Fleet Street. He is for 
two moments obstructed by colliding with a shoe- 
black, and just fails, in consequence, to catch a 
certain train at Ludgate Hill. In the train next 
following, which he takes, he meets an editor B., 
who asks him to write an article upon a strike in 
Northumberland. This particular article, from a 
casual paragraph in it, leads to controversy on a 
certain social reform, questions are asked in the 
House of Commons, an agitation is started 
throughout the country, leading finally to a 
change of Ministry. Now, directly owing to the 
change of Ministry, a European war, which might 



86 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

otherwise have been avoided for an indefinite 
time, is precipitated, and the affairs of the whole 
world are affected thereby. How ? Really by 
the shoe-black. The breaking out of the war 
was contingent upon a particular change of 
Government. This change hinged upon a certain 
agitation arising out of a certain controversy in a 
certain journal, and this controversy would not 
have been started but for the meeting of A. and 
B. Finally, A. and B. would not have met, we 
assume, but for the fact that a certain shoe-black 
obstructed A. at a certain point of space at a 
certain point of time. Here we have indeed the 
category. The war, the change of Ministry, the 
influence of A.'s article, all these are reducible to 
general principles or laws, psychological, social, 
or historical, but the actual happening, when, 
where, and how it did, is like the production of 
the water in the Zurich laboratory, on the 15th 
of July 1905, by Julius Schmidt, an element irre- 
ducible to any general principle or law — in other 
words, is pure chance. 

The alogical, in its media of space and time, is 
indeed being continually used up and absorbed 
by the logical in its progressive categorisation ; 
but the process not only can never reach com- 
pletion, but never makes any true approximation 
towards doing so, any more than a dog, trying to 
catch up its shadow, gets any nearer the mark he 
aims at. At every stage of the process infinity 
remains confronting us. The logic of causation 



Das 
sausen des 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 87 

can not only never overtake the infinity of 
chance, but, in spite of the illusion of reflection, 
can never make any real step towards doing so. 

Viewed abstractly in reflection, time apart, 
we have only the category before us ; but, as an 
event immediately given in time and 
space, we always have an element over 
and above the mere category. The ewigen 
function of the logical is at once to Webstuhl 

!_• J J- ' ■ • 1_ ■ 1 deP Zelt 

combine and to distinguish — in other 
words, to define the alogical content of conscious- 
ness. Every concept is a defining, every law a 
determining, of something previously undefined 
and undetermined, or imperfectly defined and 
imperfectly determined. The celebrated tree of 
Porphyry is but a progressive reduction of the 
vague infinity of the content of consciousness 
under progressively determinate concepts, or 
" finitudes," as we may term them. Similarly, 
every law of nature and of mind is a reduction 
of the infinite potentiality or mere agency (Swdpus), 
under certain determining forms. - It limits the 
infinite possibility of the agency per se in that it 
says : " Thus shall the happening be, and not 
otherwise." The determining, law-giving, logical, 
is waging incessant war upon the indeterminate, 
lawless alogical. It is this eternal process that 
constitutes the ceaseless movement of existence 
in space and time — "das sausen des ewigen 
Webstuhl der Zeit." Hence this antithesis of 
chance and law is a very good test-case of the 



88 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

capacity of Pallogism to establish its position. 
On the face of things, in every event we can 
trace an element reducible to law and an element 
not so reducible. But, on the theory of Pallo- 
gism, which, as we have said, has in this instance 
passed over into popular thought, the above is an 
illusion : law is in truth all in all, and chance is 
swallowed up in law. When we come to analyse 
any concrete event, however, we invariably find 
it to contain an irresolvable chance - element, 
which thought in vain endeavours to force into 
the mould of the causal category. This irresolv- 
able chance - element is the infinite particularity 
of the happening, the infinite possibility of its 
thisness in space and time. Most assuredly no 
concrete event is wholly made up of the chance- 
element any more than it is of the law-element. 
There are certain events that apparently show a 
preponderance of the latter and others of the 
former, but every event is, in the last resort, an 
indissoluble unity of both. 

If we would consider the absurdity involved 
in the attempt to force the infinite details of 
Theory of cnanc e into the Spanish boots of law, 
probabili- we have only to analyse the mathe- 
M matical theory or alleged law of prob- 

abilities. Put in its simple form, this theory has 
two sides. It affirms (i) that in the tossing of 
coins, in the throwing of unloaded dice, or the 
turning of an accurate roulette wheel, &c, the 
appearance of the opposed chances is, over a 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 89 

long series, evenly balanced; but also (2) that 
in every separate case the probabilities of the 
appearance of each of the respective chances is 
equal. Thus, at Monte Carlo, let us say, after 
a run of ten reds, it is maintained that the chance 
of an appearance of an eleventh red exactly 
equals the chance of the appearance of a black. 
Now, I think that it is not difficult to see that 
the two sides of this " law," as thus stated, 
contradict each other. If, on a long series, the 
chances must — as the "law" states — equalise 
each other, it is quite clear that at the end of 
a long series of one colour we must necessarily 
be nearer to the reappearance of the opposite 
colour than at the beginning of such series. In 
other words, if the first half of the " law " be 
correct, the eleventh spin of a red series must 
necessarily offer us a greater probability of the 
occurrence of black than of red. Gambling 
theorists are fond of emphasising that there is 
no reason assignable why the one should turn 
up rather than the other after any number of 
repetitions of the same "even chance." For, 
say they, after ten reds the red compartments 
remain as numerous and as capable of receiving ' 
the ivory ball as at the beginning of the series. 
How, therefore, it is asked, can the mere fact - 
of the long repetition by any possibility adversely 
affect the chances of red again repeating itself? 
Now, it is clear, we again point out, that one 
of two alternatives must obtain. If there is any 



go THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

circumstance that, in a long series of wheel-turns, 
somewhere compels equality in the results of the 
turns, then the chances cannot be equal at each 
turn. On the other hand, if they are equal at 
each turn, then there is no assignable reason 
why one colour should not turn up to all eternity, 
for if it has turned up once, there is no assign- 
able cause why it should not turn up again, and 
so on to infinity. 

Furthermore, this so-called law of probabilities 
defines nothing. A true law always defines some- 
thing, that is, it proclaims one event as 
probalbili- necessary, and another as impossible, 
ties no true Thus, while affirming: that certain 

13,W. 

events must happen, we likewise affirm 
that certain other events cannot happen, basing 
our assertion on the fact that they are contrary 
to the law of gravity, or to the laws of chemistry, 
physics, physiology, &c. But no event can, 
strictly speaking, be affirmed to be irreconcil- 
able with the "law" of probabilities, as theoreti- 
cally stated. The turning up of red a hundred 
times in succession at Monte Carlo, or of any 
other even chance in any game of chance, may 
be thought to be in defiance of this law ; but 
should this improbability take place, the apologist 
for the " law " is quite equal to the occasion, for 
he will tell you that there is no chance, however 
improbable, that may not turn up. Thus this 
" law " decides nothing and determines nothing, 
since every conceivable event can, " with a little 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 91 

shuffling," be made to accord with its theory. 
It is no true law, because it seeks to reduce 
the per se alogical element in experience under 
the logical category. To bring the former under 
the domain of causation, it would have to show 
it as the product of some determinate agency 
operating in a uniform manner. This is always 
traceable in the real up to a certain point, but 
also always in conjunction with elements that 
are not so traceable. Our inability to formulate, 
without involving self-contradiction, any theory 
of chance, is revealed by the antinomies we find 
ourselves involved in, the moment we attempt 
to do so — the moment we try to formulate the 
alogical in the relational terms of abstract 
thought. % 

But there is another argument in favour of the 
non-existence of chance as such. It is similar 
in character to that of the "eternal L awan a 
glance," of which it is indeed another ehanee 
version. It is often said that what posJ}^ 
we call chance simply implies imper- elements 
feet knowledge. Were we to know of realit y- 
all things, we are told, we should see them con- 
forming to a rational plan. There would be no 
chance, no remainder left over unaccounted for 
by law ; all things would be seen to happen as 
through and through determined by the condi- 
tions of a rational causation. This may be 
described as a pious opinion, but no ground 
for it is discoverable by an analysis of the con- 



92 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

ditions of reality. We have already pointed out 
that every event is conditioned in its actual 
happening by an infinite regress of other events, 
each of which events is in its turn equally con- 
ditioned by an infinite regress of yet other events, 
and so on to infinity.. This is a philosophical 
commonplace if you will, but it is a common- 
place to the bearings of which much less than 
due weight is given in philosophical literature, 
for it involves nothing less than the recognition 
of chance as a positive principle in the series of 
events — in the time-movement of the real world. 
Each of these events, taken separately, our judg- 
ment tells us, might not have happened, or might 
have happened otherwise. A law or general 
principle of causation is, on the contrary, valid 
apart from all the particulars making up the 
sensible content of time and space. It is through 
and through logical. We are justified un- 
doubtedly — the pedantry of empirical psycholo- 
gists of the Associational school notwithstanding 
— in asserting that a causal principle must always 
obtain, that, for example, oxygen and hydrogen 
chemically combined according to the recognised 
formula must necessarily produce water. This is 
the law, the causal element, in the particular 
events constituting the exploits of Julius Schmidt 
on the date and at the time mentioned, in the 
particular laboratory referred to. But to allege 
that the matter of fact of the water being pro- 
duced thus by the person at the place, on the 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 93 

day, and at the time of day indicated, is equally 
necessary, that you can reduce these things also 
under a law or universal causal formula, suggests, 
I submit, a state of intoxicated Pallogism that 
ignores the most salient distinctions, and indeed 
all factors in the analysis that do not suit its 
preconceptions. It is alleged that, could the 
whole circumstances be known, we should see 
the whole occurrence to be necessary, and not 
partly fortuitous. But herein, be it observed, lies 
an illusion and a false assumption. It is assumed 
that the whole circumstances could be known, 
and it is assumed that the circumstances them- 
selves are finite, and therefore could be spoken 
of as a whole. Could we speak of the entire 
circumstances, we might possibly conceive this 
whole as known, but when with every step we 
take we are confronted with ever- fresh vistas 
of conditioning particulars, each one of which 
particulars is a terminus ad quern of a similar 
vista, it is clear that the mass of details with 
which we are met is infinite (the " bad infinite " 
of Hegel, if you will), and hence that we cannot 
speak of it as a whole at all. But a complete 
knowledge or comprehension of an infinity, we 
again insist, is absurd. We can only comprehend 
the determinate or the determinable. All think- 
ing, being an act of determination, is necessarily 
a negation of infinity. The understanding or 
grasping, in the form of complete knowledge, of 
infinity, or of any content of consciousness in- 



94 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

volving infinity, is plainly, therefore, a contradic- 
tion in terms. 

Most persons who rail at the idea of chance, 
have at the back of their minds the notion of an 

absolute prius in the order of time, 
Infinity a , r • i i 

parte ante a complex ol events, either uncaused 

and a parte r having the will of a Supreme Being 
■ for its cause, whence all subsequent 
events are derivable. It is, at basis, the notion 
of a machine being set going. But if we 
confine ourselves to the analysis of experience 
as we find it, and refrain from reading into it 
gratuitous and even unthinkable hypotheses, we 
come to see that we can assign no beginning to 
the flux of events in time, the flux being co- 
extensive with time itself, and hence with reality 
(cf. Kant on the "antinomies"). Once having 
grasped this, we see the notion of an absolute 
prius to be absurd and meaningless. Starting 
from actual consciousness, we have to deal with 
an infinity a parte ante and a parte post. 

The domain of the alogical particular is ever 
invaded by the logical universal. Ever wider 
generalisations are being made ; continually fresh 
masses of fact are being reduced to order and 
law or general cause — in other words, to the 
logical. But this process, in spite of its cease- 
less advance, makes no impression on the infinite 
remainder of chance — on the domain of the alo- 
gical. The logical, although by its very nature 
continually devouring the alogical, never gets a 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 95 

step nearer towards exhausting it. The above is 
conspicuously noticeable in the mode of the great 
antithesis we are just now considering, namely, 
that of chance and law. The chance-element, 
which involves infinity, defies our efforts to re- 
duce it under any logical formula whatever. The 
same applies, mutatis mutandis, throughout the 
whole domain of mathematics. The sphere of 
mathematical science is, as Kant pointed out, 
the sphere of time and space. In other words, 
mathematics deals with the realm of the par- 
ticular — of the alogical. Hence in all the for- 
mulations of mathematics an antinomy is found 
to lurk ; every branch of mathematics leads to 
mutual impossibilities of thought. This is par- 
ticularly noticeable in the higher mathematics. 
In the lower branches it is more or less concealed 
by the utility of the results obtained in their 
character of "practical postulates." 

We have now completed our consideration of 
the leading modes in which the cardinal antithesis 
of alogical and logical manifests itself in reality, 
and translates itself into reflective thought. In 
the next chapter, which will deal with psycho- 
logical issues, we shall have occasion to point out 
other minor modes of this cardinal antithesis. 
Meanwhile, before concluding the present chapter, 
it may be worth while for me to forestall certain 
objections that may be taken to my employing the 
terms alogical and logical for the two complemen- 
tary elements discoverable in every synthesis. 



96 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

It may be objected that the word used for one 
term of the antitheses is purely negative. The 
answer to this is, that only by a nega- 
te terms* 8 t ^ ve can one adequately express for re- t 
used for flective thought, as notion, the element 
cardinal signified, taken as a whole and in all 
its bearings. The antithesis in ques- 
tion may coincide in many respects with that 
between matter and form, or again between 
potentiality and actuality. But neither the one 
nor the other expression, it seems to me, so 
completely covers the ground as that chosen. 
The antithesis, matter and form, is a sliding 
relation, as we may term it ; what is material in 
one relation may be formal 'in another. Hence in 
the terms matter and form as commonly used, 
matter may involve the logical element. It is 
only qua the special form of the logical that is 
for the moment under consideration, that matter 
is spoken of as alogical. The 7rpu>rrj v\tj (primary 
and formless matter) of Aristotle, as against the 
elSos, certainly, however, approaches the notion 
very closely, at least on one of its sides. Then, 
again, the potential and the actual, although in 
general coinciding with the great antithesis 
termed by us the logical and the alogical, is 
also unsatisfactory if attempted to be used as 
interchangeable with the latter. For example, 
particularity, considered as immediacy or this- 
ness, while undoubtedly falling on the side of 
the alogical, cannot certainly be regarded or 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 97 

accurately spoken of as a potentiality. It is, on 
the contrary, actuality itself, actuality "of the 
first water." On the whole, therefore, while not 
unmindful of a certain clumsiness, if one will, 
about them, I can find no better terms to 
designate the distinction meant than those of 
alogical and logical. This antithesis interpene- 
trates, down to its innermost marrow, all reality, 
the elements constituting which, clearly distin- 
guishable though they be, cannot present them- 
selves in isolation from each other, even in 
thought, much less in fact. 

Let us sum up the results arrived at in the 
present chapter. We have seen how philosophic 
Idealism proves that all reality means summary 
experience, and that this again implies of chapter, 
synthesis. Within the primary synthesis of con- 
scious experience, analysis discloses three funda- 
mental terms as the ultimate terms to which 
this synthesis is reducible — an ultimate subject- 
element, an ultimate object-element within this 
subject as its otherness or self-negation, and the 
reciprocal relation between these primary terms. 
The primary elements themselves we have, for 
want of a better word, termed the alogical, and 
the relation between them we have indicated as 
the ultimate, the most generalised, form of the 
logical, or of thought in its strict sense. We 
have seen that in the antithesis here given of the 
alogical and logical, as primary terms or elements 
of all possible consciousness, we have the ultimate 

G 



98 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

aspect of certain important antitheses interpene- 
trating reality, which I have termed the modes of 
the alogical. The most salient of these we find 
to be particular and universal, being and appear- 
ance, infinite and finite, and chance and law. 
We have found that life, reality, as such, always 
bases itself on the alogical, but that thought, with 
its logical forms, while necessary to the com- 
pleted synthesis of reality, can never finally com- 
prehend or explain the ultimate terms of which 
it is the relation. We have traced this in the 
salient modes of the antithesis ; we have seen 
that the universal of thought can never completely 
grasp or absorb the particular of sense. We 
have seen that the appearance or phenomenon 
can never exhaust the being, the infinite possi- 
bility, of the object. We have seen that the 
limiting thought-form, the principle of finitude, 
can never cover the ^-finitude that constitutes 
its material. Further, in the case of chance and 
law, we have seen that reality, as process in time, 
always involves an irreducible chance-element 
which the category of cause in vain endeavours 
to reduce to subjection. We have also seen that 
the attempts of the logical to absorb or overcome 
the alogical inevitably land us in alternate impos- 
sibilities of thought or antinomies. We have last 
of all considered the question in what sense re- 
flective thought, as logical, can even indicate the 
alogical at all under the form of the concept. 
That it does so, however imperfectly, is clear, 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 99 

since otherwise we could not speak or think of 
the alogical in any of its modes. We have dis- 
covered, however, that these concepts are merely 
symbols, and that the possibility of their standing 
for that which is per se antithetic to themselves 
rests on their common ground as factors in the 
one ultimate synthesis that we call experience or 
consciousness-in-general. 

Note on the Infinite. 

Attempts have recently been made to justify the 
assumption of an actual infinite under the name 
of "self-representative system." A distinction is 
drawn between the arithmetical infinite, the infinite 
regress, and the infinite of immanent self-con- 
tainedness, as we may term it. Hegel, of course, 
adumbrated a similar point of view in his distinc- 
tion between the infinite proper and the false 
infinite {das schlechte Unendliche). It is con- 
tended that the essential nature of the infinite 
is self-containedness. An infinite system in the 
true sense, it is said, must contain within itself 
its own principle and its own end and comple- 
tion. Its perfection is not external to itself, but 
immanent within itself. It is further contended 
that the numerical infinite, the infinite regress, as 
it is termed, is unessential to infinity as such. 
This point has been elaborated recently at great 
length by Professor Royce in his " The World 
and the Individual " (of which it forms one of the 

I. OF C. 



ioo THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

salient positions), following upon the mathema- 
tician Dedekind and others. The true infinite, 
on this view, implies at once "a single system 
and also an endless Kette." This is termed by 
Mr. Royce a "self -representative" or "self- 
imaged " system. It is illustrated by the idea 
of a self-reflecting mirror or of an ideally " per- 
fect map of England within England." In either 
case, the self-representation must be postulated as 
running into infinity and yet as never transcend- 
ing itself. Mr. Royce bases his thesis also upon 
the mathematical theory of prime numbers. In 
this theory, unlike certain of his colleagues, he is 
prepared to admit the infinite as infinite series 
or indefinite regress, which, however, he regards 
not only as not fatal to his notion of positive and 
actual infinity, but as an integral part of it. Pro- 
fessor A. E. Taylor, in his " Elements of Meta- 
physics" (pp. 150-5), seems to dispose of Mr. 
Royce's version of the theory. He points out 
that the fundamental defect in the Royce reason- 
ing lies " in the tacit transition from the notion 
of an infinite series to that of an infinite com- 
pleted sum." For the criticism itself the reader 
is referred to Professor Taylor's work. 

But, apart from the special turn given to the 
theory by Professor Royce and the mathematicians 
on whom he bases his doctrine, and reverting to 
the wider issues, it may fairly be doubted whether 
by the usage of language or even in itself there 
is justification for employing the term " infinite " 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 101 

to any self-contained system of immanent deter- 
minations such as that supposed. We shall come 
back to this more fully in a subsequent part of 
the present work. Meanwhile we must content 
ourselves here with a few further observations. 

Firstly, as regards language, it can hardly be 
denied that, except in certain treatises expository 
of philosophic Idealism, the term " infinite " always 
refers, directly or indirectly, to the endless pos- 
sibility of repetition in time and space. In other 
words, the indefinite regress always lies at the 
foundation of the popular notion of the infinite 
and, up to a certain point, of the philosophical 
notion of it. v Thus the Supreme Being of ordinary 
theology is said to be infinite, by which is cer- 
tainly meant, not that he is regarded, in the 
sense of modern philosophic Idealism, as an all- 
embracing consciousness, self-determined from 
within, but simply that he is a being whose 
knowledge and power are not limited by time 
or space — not that he is "irrespective of time 
and space," but that he apprehends and acts 
through endless time and space. This notion may 
be, of course, absolutely self- contradictory, and 
hence inconceivable, when brought to book, but 
it is undoubtedly the notion floating before the 
minds of all theists who are not metaphysicians 
in the technical sense. Infinity, as an attribute 
of the self-complete Absolute of Professor Royce, 
Professor Taylor, and other modern idealists, 
including even Professor Bradley, certainly has 



102 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

no warranty in usage, either in popular thought, 
in science, or, except partially, even in philosophy. 
Again, looking at the word purely from its philo- 
logical side, this " being infinite or without limits " 
clearly has a time-space reference, as implying 
the possibility of continuation beyond any given 
number or any given point. The concept or 
category, which may be viewed as in itself without 
reference to time and space — as, so to say, outside 
time and space — is in its intrinsic essence nothing 
if not afe-finite. It can only be spoken of as 
zVz-finite in the sense of covering an endless 
possibility of sense-particulars. In other words, 
infinity can only be predicated of the concept 
with reference to its complementary factor in 
the synthesis of real experience, and not in itself. 
It is only as the relation of alogical terms in 
time and space, and even then only by a violence 
done to language, that the logical concept can 
be spoken of as infinite. 

On the above grounds, I have no hesitation 
in employing the word " infinite " in the sense 
sanctioned by most frequent usage. The term 
"infinite" is in the present work exclusively 
taken as an attribute of the alogical aspect of 
experience, of the sensible and volitional terms > 
constituting its material, of which time and space 
are the media. In the fact that time and space 
are, as such, forms of the alogical, and hence 
cannot find adequate expression in the terms 
of reflective thought, we have, I believe, the 



THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 103 

key to the puzzles constantly recurring in all 
departments of mathematical science. Problems 
of space and time as such, and of the sensible 
content of space and time, inevitably give rise 
to antinomies whenever it is attempted to express 
them in the logical formulae of the reflective 
consciousness. It is in vain that we try to solve 
these problems under the relational form of 
thought. The ravelled edges of the alogical 
project awkwardly, and refuse to be fitted into 
the scheme of our formulations. 



IV 

THE INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 

We must always bear in mind, as regards in- 
vestigations into pure philosophy, that although 

we may, for the sake of convenience, 
From t« • i i • 

primary divide our subject up into sections, yet 

synthesis there is, strictly speaking, no break in 
to indi- , ; r t • i 

vidual the conscious process. It is always 

conscious- one indivisible, and continuous. From 
its ultimate metaphysical elements to 
the concrete personal consciousness, here and 
now, the process is unbroken — there is no hiatus. 
The same elements, constituting the lowest terms 
to which we can reduce the process by reflective 
thought, namely, pure subject-object and inter- 
relating activity, reappear in a transformed guise 
at every more concrete stage of the process. 
At every stage of reality we find alogical terms 
synthetised by a relational activity that we term 
logical. There is no tendency at any stage, 
however, as Pallogism assumes, for the syn- 
thetising relation, in any of its forms, to absorb 
the terms related ; or, at least, even if we 
assume such tendency to exist, as tendency, 
it certainly never completes itself. The alogical, 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 105 

notwithstanding the efforts of the logical to 
absorb it, always remains stubbornly outside. 
With Hamlet we may say, it is, "as the air, 
invulnerable," and the logical's " vain blows " 
are "malicious mockery." The above does not 
apply merely to the activity of thought as the 
synthetising force of the concrete world in 
general. Were the alogical, as Hegel contends, a 
mere sich-selbstaufhebendes moment of the logical, 
it must ultimately be absorbed completely, with- 
out remainder left over, in the logical. But this, 
most assuredly, is not the case. 

As we have just said, there is no break in the 
process of concrete consciousness (the "trans- 
cendental process," as the classical 
philosophy of Germany termed it). fg ene tie 
We may divide our point of view process of 
into metaphysic, theory of knowledge ne<ss ei0US " 
(epistemology), and psychology ; but 
what we have before us is really one subject 
of investigation. It is, in fact, impossible to 
keep these several points of view, in the long 
run, distinct. It is impossible to discuss the 
ultimate elements presupposed in all conscious 
experience, or the modes in which these elements 
appear in the more concrete stages of the pro- 
cess, without using psychological terminology, 
since there is no sharp line of demarcation 
between psychology and epistemology, or be- 
tween either and metaphysic, as the word is 
understood by Modern Idealism. Let us take, 



io6 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

for instance, the ordinary common-sense per- 
ception of a so-called external world in space. 
The construction of this world, as it appears 
complete and fully matured to common-sense 
consciousness, constituting, as it does, the reality 
par excellence of the ordinary (t man-in-the- 
street," is an epistemological problem. Common- 
sense consciousness finds it already there, to all 
appearance complete. All the changed aspects 
it assumes above the level of the bare common- 
sense consciousness are regarded as accruing 
to the individual mind that apprehends it, and 
as not, like the world as presented to this 
common-sense consciousness, pertaining to the 
external object itself. Hence the said aspects 
are relegated to the domain of psychology. 
But this distinction, though valid enough from 
the common-sense standpoint, has no meaning 
from that of philosophy. Both alike represent 
articulations or phases in the at once continuous 
and timeless process of consciousness. 

To illustrate this, let us say that we enter a 
town for the first time ; we perceive its houses, 

Illustration * ts streets > an( ^ ^ ts relative localisations 
of fore- from the point of view of bare common- 
going, sense consciousness — of ordinary ex- 
perience, as we say. In other words, we perceive 
it in a way in which we instinctively assume it is 
perceived by every one else. We live in that 
town a year, passing through the various personal 
experiences that a year brings with it. By the 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 107 

end of that time, does the town present the same 
aspect to us that it did when we first entered it ? 
Yes, and no. Yes, in so far as there is nothing 
in our perception of it at the end of the twelve 
months precisely inconsistent or definably incom- 
patible with our perception of it at the beginning 
of that period of time ; the solid substratum of 
common-sense consciousness is there — so much is 
clear. No, in so far as the original common-sense 
perception has been transformed by the incre- 
ment of personal associations, moods, &c, which 
has entered into it. For my consciousness it is 
no longer the same. The "lie" of the streets, 
the aspect of the public buildings, have undergone 
a change, but what this change is I cannot make 
intelligible to common-sense. I cannot describe 
it nor define it, since language in this connection 
has as its standing-ground precisely the conscious- 
ness or everyday experience common to all, and 
this will not help me in the present instance. I 
might perhaps indicate it by art had I the ade- 
quate genius, in the " atmosphere" of a picture, 
or a poem, or a musical composition ; but in the 
language of common life or of scientific definition 
this is impossible. It is, in short, one of those 
things that can be indicated, but not expressed. 
The above is one illustration of how the process 
of combination and distinction, of the enrichment 
of content, which characterises the dialectical 
movement of the elements of consciousness, does 
not leave off with the attainment of the niveau of 



io8 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

ordinary experience (common-sense perception), 
but continues on into the region of psychology, 
or, in other words, of the individual conscious- 
ness as such (in this case the perceptive con- 
sciousness of the individual). 

There is a side of psychology, of course, that is 
definitely separated from either metaphysic or 
Ph "o- epistemology, namely, that which is 
logieal concerned with the problems raised by 

psychology, psychophysical parallelism — the trac- 
ing of the connection of mental states as the 
correlative of physiological changes. This de- 
partment of psychology is, strictly speaking, out- 
side philosophy altogether. Its method is that 
of the physical sciences. But, apart from this, 
there are many psychological problems that un- 
doubtedly overlap the ground assigned to " theory 
of knowledge." It is often very difficult to say 
where one ends and the other begins. There is, 
perhaps, scarcely a philosophical problem that 
cannot, if we will, be stated and its solution for- 
mulated in the terms of psychology. 

Where can the individual consciousness be 
said to begin ? What is its specific mark ? The 
individual consciousness (self - con- 
dividual sciousness) implies, I take it, the re- 
eonseious- cognition of a definite thread of 
defined memory knitting together the reflective 
side of an indefinite series of moments 
of consciousness into one whole or " mental ob- 
ject." With this " mental object " is associated the 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 109 

immediate consciousness of a particular animal 
(human) body as its instrument. This synthesis 
of memory is reduced by reflective thought to 
being itself simply one of the objects of experi- 
ence, one particular personality as against a 
world of other particular personalities. It occupies, 
nevertheless, a unique position as being, so to 
say, the gate by which every other object of 
consciousness must enter. "The word " I," as 
used in common language, "myself," "me," are 
expressions denoting a determinate, a particular, 
memory-synthesis immediately given in conscious- 
ness, as involved with a determinate, a particular, 
quasi-external object, my own body. This animal 
body is postulated by me as external, that is, as 
existing in space, but it is not immediately given 
in consciousness as completely external, like other 
objects in space. Its reality, that is to say, is not 
exhausted for me in the fact of its being extended 
in space ; it is thus only quasi-external. My 
body is hence a middle term between myself as 
memory-synthesis of feelings, thoughts, and voli- 
tions, and the world as given, extended in space. 
Thus the individual consciousness, or self-con- 
sciousness properly so called, may be defined as 
the determination of the subject, presupposed 
in all conscious experience whatever, as this 
memory-synthesis correlated with this human 
body. Our conviction that the world does not 
arise or perish with ourselves, means that we 
recognise, over and above this memory-synthesis, 



no THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

correlated with this human body, the root-principle 
of knowing, or becoming aware, as being pre- 
supposed in self-consciousness. We instinctively 
feel that the that in us which distinguishes between 
the object self {i.e. the thoughts, feelings, and 
volitions embraced in the memory-synthesis) and 
the object not-self {i.e. the outer world or content 
of space) is, as subject of consciousness-in-general, 
intrinsically prior to the distinction of self and 
not-self, since these latter are its determinations. 
This, which to the ordinary man is an instinctive 
feeling that he interprets falsely as implying an 
existence for the outer world independent of 
consciousness altogether, receives its adequate 
formulation in philosophy. 

Notwithstanding the criticism of Mr. Bradley 
("Appearance and Reality," p. 83, sqq.), I con- 
Critieism ten d that the unbroken continuity of 
of Mr. memory (lapses of sleep, swoons, &c, 

Bradley. being extruded by the waking con- 
sciousness) is all that the personal identity, or 
self, implied in the individual consciousness, 
really means. " Memory," says Mr. Bradley, < 
" depends on reproduction from a basis that is 
present — a basis that may be said to consist of 
self-feeling." So far as this expression means 
anything to me, it must either refer to the ulti- 
mate subject involved in all consciousness — in 
other words, have a metaphysical reference — or 
it must refer to the dull background of organic 
sensation, and have a psycho-physiological signi- 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS in 

ficance. On the former assumption, memory, of 
course, would depend on this basis, but that 
Mr. Bradley does not refer to the metaphysical 
presupposition of all experience is shown by the 
fact that he talks about his " self-feeling " as 
remaining the same and changing. As such, I 
can only assume, since even the dull massiveness 
of organic sensation could not well be spoken of 
as changing in this sense, that he must mean 
the continuity, as series of a given experience, of 
the thisness or immediacy of every conscious 
moment. But what is it, I ask, but memory that 
fixes this experience as one and indivisible in 
time ? In spite of his best endeavours, Mr. 
Bradley has not shown that personal identity 
(or self-sameness as involved in individual con- 
sciousness) consists in anything else than the 
fixation of consciousness-in-general, as a particular 
content of time correlated with a particular 
human body as its instrument — in a word, by 
what we call memory. That a definite thread 
of continuity is requisite for personal identity is 
admitted by Mr. Bradley, who (in so far as he 
does so) gives up his case for destructive criticism. 
If I might say so without offence, Mr. Bradley 
seems, in Chapters IX. and X. of " Appearance 
and Reality," first to raise a dust-cloud, and then 
to complain that he cannot see. Here, as else- 
where throughout his book, Mr. Bradley is on 
the look-out for contradictions. Now, there is 
nothing easier than to discover contradictions in 



ii2 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

every logical formulation. Mr. Bradley himself 
rejects, nominally at least, the pallogistic theory 
of thought-relations in vacuo, that is, without 
terms to be related. Notwithstanding this, he 
seems to be surprised that he cannot compress 
the real into the Spanish boots of the logical. 
Yet the real, as we have often enough pointed 
out in the course of these pages, is in the last 
resort a synthesis of alogical and logical ; and the 
logical as such can never explain, or furnish an 
adequate formula for, the alogical as such. 
Whenever you attempt this, the result is that 
you are landed in self-contradictions or anti- 
nomies. But Mr. Bradley's whole procedure 
consists in the endeavour to find an adequate 
logical formula for the alogical, to make the 
logical absorb the alogical without leaving a 
remainder over. His Absolute, in the last resort, 
means an ultimate reality that yet lacks the 
conditions of reality. In spite of his protesta- 
tions to the contrary, it is, I contend, no more 
satisfactory in this respect than the old Hegelian 
pallogistic "Idee" Personal identity, then, I 
submit, means nothing more than the knitting 
together of a particular or personal experience 
into a memory-synthesis. 

The continuance of the extended object — our 
body — is the objective clue in space to the con- 
tinuance of our personal identity in time. (In 
some cases of dual personality this clue may 
prove misleading.) The thread once snapped, 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 113 

the synthesis once dissolved, we must regard as 
gone for ever. The same synthesis can hardly 
be renewed, since its identity consists simply and 
solely in the continuity of its thisness. The in- 
divisible moment of actual consciousness, its this- 
ness, is, to use a geometrical analogy, the point 
that produces itself as line in the memory-synthesis 
of personal identity. The foregoing may sound 
paradoxical to those accustomed to Animistie 
think of the human " soul " as a notion of 
thing, an existing substance, capable, tne " souL " 
it may be, of motion in space, of ascending up 
to heaven, of descending to the other place, of 
transmigration into other bodies — in a word, 
of having an unexplained objectively real exist- 
ence apart from the thisness of the memory- 
synthesis. According to the notion of those 
who conceive the matter thus, no absurdity would 
be involved in supposing a person now living 
to be the same (that is, to possess the same 
" soul ") as Julius Caesar, Apollonius of Tyana, 
or c v Napoleon Bonaparte. If we examine the 
matter more closely, we shall find that the notion 
of personal identity is here wholly illusory, and 
based upon a very crude and primitive analogy. 
The " soul " or personality is regarded, to wit, 
as an object in space possessing mental qualities 
and properties. Just as a skin may hold wine 
or oil, so the soul is invariably looked upon by 
the adherents of this order of speculation as in 
some sense extended in space and containing the 

H 



ii 4 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

personal consciousness. This way of conceiving 
it, a direct legacy from primitive Animism, is ex- 
pressed by Shakespeare's Claudio in " Measure 
for Measure" (Act iii. scene i). 

" Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; 
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot : 
This sensible warm motion to become 
A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice ; 
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, 
And blown with restless violence round about 
The pendent world." 

Compare also the "Ancient Mariner" in his 
description of the passing of his colleagues : — 

" The souls did from their bodies fly, 
They fled to bliss or woe ; 
And every soul it passed me by 
Like the whizz of my cross-bow." 

We find the theory, in its latest and most 
finished literary form, in the late Mr. Myers' 
book, " Human Personality and its Survival of 
Bodily Death," where the author seems to postu- 
late the " soul " as a kind of highly refined ether. 
This is, of course, an fond the quasi-material 
" double " or primitive Animism and of modern 
Spiritism. It is against so crude a survival of 
early ideas as this that the Materialism of modern 
science (compare its latest and most complete work- 
ing-out in the Welt-Rdthsel of Hackel) rightly 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 115 

protests in proclaiming that, viewed from the 
physical standpoint, that is, as objectively real, 
mentation is nothing but cerebration, that is, 
matter of some kind in motion. Even if we 
assume Mr. Myers' theory of Animism (as brought 
up to date and clothed in modern scientific lan- 
guage) to be admissible as a hypothesis, nay even 
as a probable truth, it would not in the least 
affect the ultimate problem of reality. The latter 
is, in the true sense of the word, a metaphysical 
problem, whereas all such hypotheses as that of 
Mr. Myers do not transcend the realm of space, 
matter, and motion. % Hackel postulates the 
ordinary " ether " of modern science as the ulti- 
mate source of brain and nerve changes, as of 
other physical phenomena. Mr. Myers postu- 
lates a still more refined special ether of his 
own as the physical explanation of certain psy- 
chical phenomena, real or alleged. Hence Mr. 
Myers is, au fond, as much a materialist as 
Professor Hackel, though not so scientific a 
one. (Cf. Haldane's " Pathway of Reality," vol. 
ii. pp. 258-269.) 

That the individual consciousness is not im- 
mortal necessarily follows, I think, from the fact 

of its having arisen in time, and of its _ _. . _ , 
. 1 • r 1 r Individual 

hence partaking 01 the nature 01 a conseious- 

chance-product. All that arises in nessand 

time {i.e. the particular) must perish 

in time, since the fact of its having arisen when 

before it was not, shows its existence to have 



u6 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

no inherent necessity attaching to it. It must, 
therefore, be contingent upon the infinity of 
particulars in time, and in the ceaseless change 
proper to this time-content it is uninterruptedly 
exposed to the possibility of a collocation of these 
particulars causally incompatible with its con- 
tinued existence. Whether the dissolution of the 
animal body by death constitutes in itself such 
a collocation, is simply a question for science. 
The tendency of science, up to date, has, it 
must be admitted, been towards answering this 
question in the affirmative. 

Consciousness assumes the form of the par- 
ticular, in contradistinction to the universal, in 

_, . the memory-synthesis, or individual 

Theimpu- * { ' 

tationof mind. Consciousness here becomes 
conscious- self-object — what Kant termed the 
side our "object of the internal sense." As 
own pep- such it becomes a particular among a 
possible infinity of other particulars of 
the same universal class or kind. It becomes 
a numerical one over against a many. But it is 
only indirectly, or through reflection, that the 
individual consciousness, with its continuum of 
thisness — self-identity — is presented as nume- 
rical. That there are other " myselves " or 
memory-syntheses besides this one (mine) may 
be a primary inference of reflective thought, 
but it is, in the last resort, only an inference, 
and not, like the manifold of particular objects 
in space, immediately given. It is, if you will, 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 117 

a " practical postulate " — to use Mr. Schiller's 
favourite expression — but in any case it is based 
on an inference arising through reflection. The 
above is curiously indicated in the earlier stages of 
empirical reflection, to wit, with primitive man. 
In this case, the instinctive inference, this neces- 
sary "practical postulate," has a tendency to 
overreach itself, and is applied indifferently, in 
primitive Animism or Fetichism, to all external 
objects whatsoever. Primitive man, that is, 
not merely postulated in all external objects, 
the "principle of subjectivity " referred to above 
(pp. 71-73), as the basis of our attribution of being 
or self-subsistence to them, whether animate or 
inanimate, but in addition he postulated a self- 
conscious personality as attaching to them, similar 
in kind to the self-conscious personality he postu- 
lated in his fellow-men as attaching to the form 
of the human body. It is only at a later stage 
that the inference or postulate becomes narrowed 
to the human, or at least animal, form. The 
human body presents itself as one of a possible 
infinity of instances of its own type in space and 
time. We are partially conscious of our own 
body as a phenomenon in space like other 
phenomena in space. We know that our own 
body involves a conscious myself as this memory- 
synthesis. From this conviction the inference 
is directly made to a plurality of persons, minds, 
or memory-syntheses like ourself as attaching to 
objects in space — first, to all objects pretty much 



u8 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

indifferently (Animism), and later only to objects 
possessing human or animal form. Yet though 
we conceive of the conscious personalities in- 
ferred in other living human bodies as separate 
from ourself, the separation is in one sense not 
so complete as that obtaining between objects 
in space as such. Particular objects in space are 
absolutely and mutually exclusive ; the particu- 
larity or individuation of these objects cannot 
be transcended or reduced to unity except in the 
logical concept, where their tkisness, and their 
whole alogical presentative aspect, is lost. But 
the vague conviction that the individuation of 
intelligences is not so ultimate as that of bodies 
in space, is borne in upon us in various ways — 
by the function of language, by the phenomena 
of sympathy, by the associative principle at the 
foundation of human society with its "super- 
organic" forms. (See below, pp. 126-36.) 

The individual consciousness, or, in other 
words, the conscious personality, as deduced 

by philosophy, we must never forget, 
dividual ls > like everything else in reflective 
andphilo- thought, of which philosophy is the 

highest outcome, no more than a uni- 
versal and abstract formula. For though the 
individual consciousness represents the fullest 
or most concrete generalisation of philosophy, 
yet, none the less, it is not concrete, it is not 
real. It lacks the tkisness, the alogical im- 
mediacy, that can alone give it flesh and blood 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 119 

— in a word, life. The individual consciousness, 
the object, properly speaking, of psychology, is 
in itself no more than a general type involving 
the universal conditions, as presented in reflec- 
tion, of any and all individual intelligences. 
Hence we, as individual minds, may be viewed 
from a double standpoint. I myself, now writing, 
no less than Smith, Brown, or Jones, am outside 
the scope of philosophy, as, for that matter, of 
psychology. In this respect I, no less than 
my friends, am an extra-philosophic, evanescent 
particular ; but we, each and all, on the other 
hand, presuppose those universal conditions of 
the individual consciousness, which is the farthest 
point philosophy with its abstract formulae can 
reach. This " universal individual," which philo- 
sophy deduces as its last word, is the abiding 
factor in each particular individual mind, but, as 
already said, it lacks the thisness of a memory- 
synthesis, which alone can make it real. It is 
a mere re-reading, in reflection, of what is in- 
volved in self- consciousness previous to the 
moment of reflection. In this previous moment 
reality is given for self-consciousness. 

Here may be the place, perhaps, to return 
once more to the common form of objection 
raised by the ordinary man to the irrefutable 
philosophical truth that reality is nothing apart 
from conscious experience, that in the last re- 
sort, we are forced to interpret it as a system 
of determinations of consciousness, possible or 



120 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

actual. Consciousness per se is here invariably 

confounded by the man of "common -sense" 

with a particular memory - synthesis. 

to/^S* Thus he wil1 tel1 y° u that he can 

ism onee conceive of all sorts of things existing 
stated or happening without any one being 

present to see or know of them. 
He then instances the nebulous period of the 
solar system, the pre-glacial epoch, the Antarctic 
seas with their Erebus and Terror, the other side 
of the moon, &c, as cases in point. He might 
just as well confine himself to instancing the 
nearest room that is empty, as regards human 
or animal occupants, at the moment of speaking, 
for this homely and commonplace instance is 
on precisely the same footing as the sensational 
ones above mentioned. The individual mind, 
as memory -synthesis, presupposes the general 
synthesis of consciousness. Its self-conscious- 
ness is superimposed upon this groundwork. 
The man-in-the-street, of robust common-sense, 
who puts the above "posers" to the philosopher, 
is really making unwittingly the distinction that 
the philosopher formulates. Says the man-in- 
the-street : " Uninhabited islands exist, rocks are 
falling, waves are dashing up against the beach." 
He forgets all the time that these things that 
he is talking about imply the primary and secon- 
dary qualities of matter, spacial extension, hard- 
ness, impenetrability, figure, colour, &c, all of 
which qualities he will see, if he thinks for a 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 121 

moment, to be nothing but feltnesses and thought- 
forms — the feltnesses being reciprocally connected 
in a systematic order by thought. But feltness 
and thought presuppose — what? A subject, of 
course, feeling and thinking. The man-in-the- 
street, try as he may, cannot get outside the 
closed circle of consciousness, possible and actual. 
When he thinks to have shaken it off, he is only 
the more deeply immeshed therein. All he gets 
rid of by the process of abstraction is the quan- 
titative particularity of the individual memory- 
synthesis, as one among many. But this is 
philosophically quite unessential. To any given 
plane of consciousness the other momenta 
that it presupposes, but which it has superseded, 
always appears as something outside and over 
and against itself. Hence comes the illusion of 
the ordinary man that the object of conscious- 
ness — the object of external perception — is some- 
thing radically distinct from consciousness. He 
finds that the content of his memory-synthesis, 
his immediate awareness, presupposes conditions 
other than itself. In a word, he finds that reality 
is never exhausted in the appearance, in the im- 
mediate perception. The content of actuality, 
of the thisness of presentment, is given as the 
sign of an indefinite potentiality other than itself. 
The man-in-the-street is implying this when he 
asks you whether the other side of the moon 
does not exist merely because no one sees it. 
He finds that the content of his memory-synthesis 



122 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

presupposes conditions other than itself; but he 
has not reached the point of recognising that 
there is no break in the continuity of these 
conditions, that the world -process is through 
and through a conscious process, and that the 
true distinction between the individual conscious- 
ness, encased in its memory-synthesis, and the 
universal synthesis of consciousness it presup- 
poses, is not the distinction between conscious- 
ness and something that is not consciousness, but 
between consciousness as actual and consciousness 
as merely potential. 

But it may be asked : Can reality, can self- 
subsistence, be predicated of the universal, but 
for us potential, synthesis of conditions which 
we see to be involved in every moment of our 
individual consciousness? Is the subject which 
knows, which becomes aware, realised? Is it 
object to itself — in a word, is it self-conscious — 
apart from, and independent of, the infinity of 
particular memory-syntheses arising and perish- 
ing in time, which are called finite "minds" or 
"personalities"? This question has already 
been discussed in Chapter II. as that of philo- 
sophical Theism, as it is termed, in contradistinc- 
tion to the theism of the man-in-the-street and 
of the ordinary theologian. We here offer some 
further remarks on the subject. 

The question resolves itself into this : Is the 
ultimate subject or potentiality of knowledge, 
which analysis discloses to us, in itself a mere 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 123 

abstraction, or is it the one self-subsistent reality ? 
Is it solely realised in the personal mind from 
which our analysis starts, or rather in the infinite 
possibility of such minds, which we assume 
our own mind, our own personal consciousness, 
here and now, to connote ? Or is it realised as 
concrete self-consciousness in some mysterious 
manner, apart from the particular minds known 
or -conceivable to us? This is a question to 
which philosophical analysis as such can return 
no answer. The philosopher, as philosopher, in 
dealing with it, is compelled to fall back upon the 
agnostic attitude. The results of his investiga- 
tion into the conditions of the possibility of 
knowledge do not afford him any light on this 
point. The philosopher of theological proclivities 
will doubtless be tempted to postulate the second 
of the above alternatives, and he will seek to 
support his assumption with philosophical argu- 
ments. The pallogistic doctrine, already criti- 
cised in these pages, is much affected by him. 
If he draws his inspiration from the old right 
wing of the Hegelian school, he conceives his 
" God " as the quintessence of the categories, 
pure thought or reason, in which sensation, 
feeling, and will, are absorbed and abolished. 
In this sense " God " is conceived as the 
Absolute, a "wound up" and eternally complete 
form of forms, in which the shadow of matter 
is not. The possibility of change, of movement 
towards aught, such as towards fuller perfection, 



i2 4 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

is excluded. The absolute in this pallogistic 
sense must always be the " durchsichtige Ruhe " 
of Hegel. But, as already pointed out in another 
connection, Pallogism necessarily issues in an 
abstraction. It lacks, in this as in other cases, 
the conditions of reality. Even if we, however, 
abandon the pallogistic position and postulate an 
absolute consciousness based on the alogical 
element essential to reality as opposed to ab- 
straction, we are still confronted with the diffi- 
culty that in conceiving the Absolute as reality 
independent of its realisation in the type of finite 
individual mind we know, we are none the less 
perforce compelled to give it a particularity of its 
own — we are compelled to regard it as indi- 
vidualised, i.e. as a self-conscious personality. 
Once, however, we do this, we cease to have 
an Absolute. What we have is at best one more 
finite mind, inconceivably wider in scope and 
richer in content than our finite mind it may be, 
but still not essentially different. At the same 
time, we surrender it as a factor in the philo- 
sophical analysis of that concrete consciousness 
or knowledge we have to explain. It then be- 
comes merely one more intelligence over against 
our own. Now, one more personal will and 
intelligence over against mine, however wider 
its range of power and knowledge, cannot pos- 
sibly, I contend, enter as an element into the 
explanation of my consciousness here and now. 
It is, in fact, impossible to formulate the Absolute 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 125 

as personality in any sense without becoming 
involved in a hopeless tangle of self-contra- 
dictions. At the same time, I am fully pre- 
pared to admit the difficulties that confront us 
in what, from a speculative point of view, seems 
the only alternative, namely, that of regarding 
the synthesis of consciousness-in-general as in 
itself a mere abstraction, which becomes realised 
solely in the finite individual mind. Here again 
I can only repeat that qua this problem the 
agnostic attitude seems the sole resource for 
philosophy. We can only say that, for 
metaphysical analysis, the ultimate subject of 
consciousness, which our immediate individual 
consciousness presupposes, is a pure potentiality, 
in other words, is no more than an abstraction, 
distinguishable, but not separable in thought, 
from the mind of the thinker. For philosophy, 
therefore, " God " is always a gratuitous hypo- 
thesis foisted on to the analysis. An abstrac- 
tion, however, we must not forget, does not 
necessarily mean a fiction. The problem is the 
crux of metaphysic, but more concerning it we 
cannot say. Philosophy, indeed, formulates the 
problem, but leaves it without any adequate 
solution. It would, as I conceive it, save much 
confusion of thought and vague speculation if 
thinkers would place clearly before themselves 
the issues here stated. For the rest the theistic 
problem is mainly ethical, and from this point of 
view we shall return to it later on. 



126 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

By way of metaphysic then, we are unable to 

arrive at any data affording us a positive clue 

to the realisation of the basal condi- 
Transeen- r ,. 

dental- tions of consciousness as personality 

sociological in any other form than that of the 
hypothesis. individua ] nnite mind that forms tne 

starting-point of our analysis. Let us see if 
we can do so analogically by way of the physico- 
psychical series presented by the order of evolu- 
tion in time and space. Here it is true that we 
are also in the region of unverifiable conjecture, 
but it is a region where, I think, we have at least 
some data sufficient to give colour to a sugges- 
tion. The suggestion may be put in the follow- 
ing form : — From the earliest beginnings of 
organic life up to that highest realisation of the 
animal body, the human form, I think it will 
be generally admitted that we observe, or, to be 
strictly accurate, we infer, a progressive unfolding 
of consciousness from the mere sentiency we 
attribute to the cell and to those animals that 
are little more than aggregates of cells, towards 
intelligence, i.e. towards thought-determination, 
culminating in the self-consciousness of the 
human personality. This we assume to be the 
final goal of physico-psychical life. Now, is not 
this last assumption somewhat arbitrary ? By 
what right do we regard the psychical evolu- 
tionary process that has hitherto advanced pari 
passu with the physical to stop at this point, 
while the physical goes on ? But if it does not 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 127 

stop here, what reason is there for not assuming 
it to follow the steps of the physical evolution? 
If there be no reason, we may surely infer by 
an obvious analogy that the next higher physical 
type that succeeds that of the animal or human 
body shall connote a new psychical type corre- 
sponding to it. To make my meaning clearer, 
we will enumerate the chief types involved in 
physical evolution up to the present. We have 
the atom (not to go farther back, and not to 
discuss rival theories concerning it), and this we 
may take as the physical basis. Next we have, 
based upon it, the molecule. The atom enters 
into the molecule as typal element merely. Next 
after the molecule we have the organic cell. 
Just as the molecule is based upon the atom 
as its elementary constituent, so is the cell, the 
typal element of organic life, based upon the 
molecule, the typal element of inorganic life. The 
next great type in the order of evolution, attained 
through many intermediate stages, is the animal 
body, which is based upon the cell as its typal 
element, just as the cell is based upon the mole- 
cule, and the molecule upon the postulated atom. 
The animal body reaches its highest perfection 
in man, and we have no special reason to assume 
an essentially higher kind of animal body as 
likely to be evolved in the future than that which, 
in the highest developed races up to date, exists 
at present. But there is yet another evolutionary 
type that has been in process of development 



128 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

from the earliest ages of man's appearance on 
this planet up to the present time, and it is even 
now no more than embryonic. I refer to human 
society. This, which, as evolutionary type, is 
commonly designated the super-organic, would 
more correctly be termed the super-animal, 
seeing that its typal-constituent is directly the 
animal body as represented by its highest form, 
the human being. It is clear, and generally 
recognised in the present day, that in human 
society we have a new evolutionary type in pro- 
cess of development towards the highest perfec- 
tion it is capable of attaining as a type. The late 
Herbert Spencer, indeed, made this a cardinal 
position of his system, and did more than any 
other thinker to enforce and illustrate it. 

So much for the physical side. Now, Hackel 
and most modern materialists insist on postulating 
a rudimentary psychic side, even to the molecule 
and the atom. They are driven to this by the 
difficulty they find involved in assuming an ab- 
solute beginning to psychic life at any point in 
the course of the process of evolution itself. 
Whether this be correct or not, all admit the 
psychical side to be correlated with the physical 
from the dawn of life, as manifested in the simple 
organism of the cell onward. Here, indeed, we can 
inferentially trace the evolution of the psychical 
side from the bare sentiency of the lowest forms 
of organic life to the intellectual master-mind 
correlated with the highest development of the 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 129 

animal body, i.e. the human form. But for those 
who admit that there is another evolutionary type 
in process of realising itself, based upon the human 
personality as individual, in other words, based 
upon the personal units constituted by individual 
human beings, just as the human being, as animal 
body, is based upon organic matter with its cellular 
units, and just as organic matter is based upon 
inorganic matter with its molecular units — for 
those who accept this view on the physical side, 
there seems to me no logical halting-ground that 
stops them from admitting a corresponding pro- 
cess of evolution on the psychical side. And if 
this be so, where are we driven to ? Clearly to 
a recognition of the psychical side as accruing 
to the super-organic (super-animal) evolutionary 
type — human society in its corporate capacity. 
We cannot get over the obvious impossibility 
that we, animal- human personalities shut up in 
our respective memory-syntheses, find in con- 
ceiving of a social-human personality, with its 
own self-consciousness, as much wider in scope 
and richer in content than the former, as the 
human-animal's is wider and richer than the sen- 
tiency of the lower nerve centres that build up his 
body. But the lower nerve centre is equally 
unable to throw itself forward into the position of 
grasping the perfected psychical side, to which it 
contributes its quota, of the fully-fledged human 
being. Should the foregoing be true, it may be 
that we shall have to seek our " God," if he is to 

1 



i 3 o THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

be a practical ideal, not so much in the realm of 

metaphysical analysis as in that of sociological 

research at its highest, or, as we may term it, in 

transcendental sociology. 

Has the foregoing hypothetical suggestion, 

based as it is upon an analogy furnished by the 

whole course of the evolutionary pro- 
Corrobora- . . . J F 

tionfrom cess, any positive corroboration irom 

soeiologieal the known facts of sociology ? I think 
facts . , 

it has. What is at the root of the 

whole ethical consciousness but the conviction 
that the telos of the individual personality lies 
outside itself as individual ? Hence arises the 
introspective form of the religious consciousness 
which requires a transcendent divinity as a com- 
plement to the individual soul, with its yearnings 
for a completion and perfection that is not itself. 
What is your " categorical imperative," your 
"ought" of consciousness, but the recognition of 
the fact that the animal- human personality is 
ultimately not an end to itself, but only a means 
to an end ? Of course we may adopt a theologi- 
cal or abstract-metaphysical explanation of these 
things, but for those who cannot see their way to 
do this, their explanation on scientific grounds by 
means of some such hypothesis as that suggested 
seems natural and almost inevitable. For such, 
many things that were before a mystery receive 
an explanation falling naturally into its place in 
the general scheme of evolution as understood by 
science. The true significance of ethics, of intro- 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 131 

spective religious aspiration, &c, is seen to have 
its ground of explanation in the fact that the 
animal -human personality is tending towards ab- 
sorption in a higher evolutionary type, based upon 
itself indeed, but in the same way as the human 
body is based upon cellular tissue with its low 
order of sentiency. This fact receives its psychic 
expression in the sense of the inadequacy of the 
animal-human personality as end to itself. The 
good man's sense of moral obligation, the mystic's 
craving for union with some divine conscious- 
ness, &c., are seen again to be the distorted ex- 
pression of a truth to which the Materialism of 
modern science has been long leading up. This 
truth, if we are right, is to be found in the 
view above given of the destined supersession 
of the animal-human personality, i.e. the indi- 
vidual mind as correlated with an animal body 
which we know to-day as the last word of Mind 
altogether, by a social-human personality, i.e. by 
a self-consciousness transcending that of the 
animal-human personality, albeit based upon it. 
The perennial ethical contradiction, the self that 
can only fulfil its own higher destiny by the denial 
of itself, here finds its explanation in the truth 
that the death no less than the birth of the animal- 
human personality, is as necessary a part of the 
process by which the life of the social-human per- 
sonality will become realised, as the disintegration 
of the organic unit of the animal body, the cell, is 
necessary to the development of the life of the 



132 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

animal body itself — the disintegration of the 
organic cell being as necessary to the life-process 
of the animal system as is the continuous produc- 
tion and reproduction of such cells. In this way 
the yearning for the ideal self, the self which 
throughout history earnest men have sought to 
realise in the negation of self, acquires a new 
meaning. On this hypothesis the higher ideal 
self is identifiable no longer with a transcendent 
divinity, but with an immanent fact of evolution. 
The moral impulse, the unsatisfied religious long- 
ings above referred to, would disclose themselves 
as, at basis, only the higher expression of that 
fact which in the world of the primal cellular life 
of organic nature is termed " organic irritability." 
For this also is nothing else than the tried, the 
inherent tendency towards realisation on a higher 
level of development. These unsatisfied longings 
of the human heart, of which we hear so much, 
would, on our hypothesis, simply mean the vague 
and instinctive conviction that, self-conscious 
though he be, the self-consciousness of the animal- 
human being is yet not the last word of self-con- 
sciousness in the order of evolution, but is in its 
nature subordinate to a higher self-consciousness, 
its relation to which the individual human mind 
may dimly feel, but cannot formulate in terms of 
its own thought. 

Let us take another fact from the field of 
sociology — the great fact that seems at once 
cause and consequence, the fact of language. It 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 133 

has often enough been pointed out how the 
power of abstract thought presumably peculiar to 
the human animal as against other mammalia, is 
determined by language, the means of intellectual 
intercommunication. It is difficult, indeed, to 
realise how completely dependent — speaking of 
course from the empirical point of view and con- 
sidering it as a product of evolution in time — is 
the perfect emergence of the self-conscious per- 
sonality upon the fact of language. - Without 
language, feeling or sensation would remain 
isolated. If we can interpret the alogical per se 
in terms of the logical, it would seem we have 
to thank language for it. Sensible quality, for 
example, which is in itself alogical, is brought 
under the logical universal by means of language, 
and is thus rendered capable of treatment by 
abstract thought. Thus colour, a logically un- 
determined feeling or sensation, is helped by 
language into the logical form of the universal, 
and becomes a fact common to all, and not cir- 
cumscribed by the memory-synthesis of the im- 
pression-receiving individual consciousness. 5 But 
language is through and through social. Its 
inception is social, and its aim is social. It is, 
indeed, a means to the full perfecting of the 
self-conscious human personality regarded as a 
time-product. But in its power of throwing the 
aforesaid animal-human mind outside itself and 
connecting it with a world of minds outside its 
own individual personality, may we not see an 



i 3 4 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

indication that while it has helped to bring the 
animal-human personality to perfection, it is also 
one of the signs of the ultimate submergence of 
the self-consciousness of the animal-human per- 
sonality in the self- consciousness of a social- 
human personality, as highly differentiated from 
it, as it is from the sentiency of its own cellular 
tissues? A similar line of argument might be 
adopted as regards aesthetics and the indications 
to the same effect afforded by the inner meaning 
of our art-consciousness. 

Again, take the power of collective suggestion, 
as shown in the behaviour of nations and other 
communities, armies, crowds, mass-meetings, &c. 
Here we find that combined conduct assumes 
a form indicating a collective mentation distinct 
from and inconsistent with that of the units, 
considered as units, of which the mass is com- 
posed. In this phenomenon of collective sug- 
gestion we have as yet no actual trace of a 
self-conscious social-human personality, but in the 
mental element referred to, as obtaining over 
and above anything in the individual minds 
composing the social-human mass in question, 
may we not perhaps detect the penumbra of this 
new type of consciousness, destined to realise 
itself in the fulness of time. Examples of the 
fact referred to will readily occur to the reader. 
We all know the wild rush of a battalion into a 
breach, regardless of death and wounds, accom- 
plished by men, many of whom in private life 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 135 

would doubtless be found wanting in courage to 

meet infinitely smaller emergencies ; the conduct of 

masses of men collectively which gives 

rise to such phrases as the " cowardice Es P pit de 
r m corps. 

of mobs"; or, again, the contagious 
enthusiasm of the mass-meeting, the self-sacrifice 
of the revolutionary band, even the esprit de corps 
of a football team. The influence of collective 
suggestion is well illustrated by the fanatical 
devotion of the " blues " and " greens " to their 
side in the Roman and Byzantine circus ; in other 
words, to what was in itself a meaningless badge. 
Last, but not least, the results of anthropology 
and the beginnings of history show us primitive 
society as essentially based on collective impulse 
or suggestion, as exemplified in the social group, 
the clan, tribe, or people. The fact that man as 
an individual, acts and feels differently from man 
as a collectivity, that an organised community of 
human beings is a corporate entity having distinct 
characteristics from the sum of those of the in- 
dividuals composing it, meets us in every aspect 
of human affairs. It furnishes us, I think, with 
yet another corroboration of the general thesis 
put forward in these pages. 

We have not gone into the question of hypno- 
tism, telepathy and allied phenomena in this con- 
nection, though it is clear that, in so far as we 
are disposed to accept them, they constitute a 
more powerful illustration than even those already 
given of the extra-individual possibilities inherent 



136 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

in the animal - human personality. This is, I 
think, clear, and there is no need to elaborate it 
further in this place. 1 

The above speculation is a digression that has 
interrupted the main task we set ourselves in the 

present chapter, namely, that of the 
of ^elf-° nS metaphysical analysis of the conditions 
conscious presupposed in the self-conscious per- 
person- sonality. We are here confronted with 

the problem of the identification of the 
Absolute Subject, that which throughout all time 
becomes conscious, the " mot premier et dternel" 
as Jaures terms it, with my memory-synthesis 
here and now — the identification of that power 
of consciousness which creates the world in and 
for me, the individual, with this very me which is 
its latest product, as representing the final term 
of that metaphysical process on which all pro- 
cesses in time depend as their prototype. The 
terminus a quo is the subject presupposed in all 
possible experience ; the terminus ad quern is the 

1 If we reflect on the issues opened up by the foregoing hypo- 
thesis, some curious speculations present themselves. One is, for 
example, that — as the consciousness of simple organic life is postu- 
lated as mere sensation, as that of the animal personality apper- 
ceives the world under the categories of common-sense reality, so 
in the highest development of the animal personality (namely, the 
human) reflective intelligence appears and metamorphoses the 
world of common-sense reality into the world of science, or, still 
further, into that of speculative thought — we may still further 
assume that a form of consciousness empirically based on higher 
and more complex conditions might apperceive immediately the 
world as it now appears mediately in the reflective intelligence of 
the man of science. 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 137 

relative finite and individual subject-object. Be- 
tween the two lies the region of the object-world, 
to wit, the region of the determination of con- 
sciousness as the content of space and time, irre- 
spective of its determination as self-consciousness. 
The impotence of the mere categories of reason, 
to deal with the purely alogical, is once more cruci- 
ally illustrated in this question of the 
self-conscious personality. The cate- puzz i e g 
gory of cause utterly breaks down here of meta- 
when it is attempted to apply it. All analysis, 
events in the time-series are in some 
measure or other amenable to the category of 
cause. The why of them can be asked and 
answered from the same point of view as that 
from which it is asked. But if I ask the question 
why, that is, by what cause, do /, considered as 
this particular diremption of consciousness here 
and now, exist at the present rather than at a 
former or a later period of the world's history, it 
is seen that the question has no meaning, that 
the category of cause and effect glances off from 
it. Let us analyse the question for a moment. 
It may be paraphrased as follows : Why does my 
individual consciousness reflect a content taken 
from that section of filled time called the end of 
the nineteenth century and the beginning of the 
twentieth, rather than from that of the thirteenth 
or the twenty-fifth ? That my psychological 
personality, that my mind or character, is built 
up out of material derived from the particular 



138 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

period of history into which I have been born, 
is a fact for which obvious causes can be as- 
signed. The question here is not, however, one 
of concrete personality, but of the mere diremp- 
tion of consciousness as this particular self- 
hood, of the thisness of my memory-synthesis 
per se and quite apart from its content. A similar 
line of argument, of course, applies to space. 
Why did the particular content of my memory- 
synthesis originate in London, Berlin, or Paris, 
rather than in Timbuctoo, Teheran, or Tokio ? 
The why, I submit, is in both cases meaningless. 
The thisness of self-consciousness on which the 
memory-synthesis is based is outside the time- 
series, and a fortiori outside the sphere of influ- 
ence of the thought-categories of which time is 
the sense-medium. The foregoing query may 
be variously propounded in the form of curious 
and even grotesque puzzles, as, for example, the 
question whether a man would be himself if his 
father had married another woman, or why he 
is not his brother. 

These questions are seen to be absurd, but 
their absurdity does not lie where it might be 
expected. Scientific reflection can very well 
answer the question in one sense, as we have 
above indicated. It is quite obvious that the 
substitution, for example, for one of the parents 
of some one else must give a different offspring. 
Similarly we may assume that science is capable, 
were the leading conditions known, of affording 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 139 

a satisfactory explanation on its own lines, of the 
obvious fact that one brother, as concrete person- 
ality, is different from another. But here again the 
real gist of the question would be passed by. It 
really means — why is the thisness of my self-con- 
sciousness, as constituting an apparent continuum 
in time (what we have termed the memory-syn- 
thesis of personal identity), although itself outside 
the content of the time-series, attached to this 
particular body rather than to another, or to this 
actual disposition of character, or particular mental 
constitution, rather than to another ? To ask the 
why of this matter may be absurd, but its absurdity 
is to be looked for in the fact that it is a strik- 
ingly flagrant instance of the attempt to reduce 
the alogical to the logical. In this case of the 
diremption of the personal consciousness, we 
have a unique instance to the point, namely, an 
immediate determination of consciousness gene- 
tically outside time and any form of the logical 
category. Hence it is that any question that 
assumes its reduction to cause, substance, or any 
other category proclaims itself straightway as 
meaningless. N 

The primary subject, which the self-consistency 
of consciousness posits as an immediate postulate, 
as that underlying my thisness having its root- 
principle in all time, becomes particularised as 
this memory-synthesis. This is all that self- 
identity or individual consciousness means per se. 
By personality we imply, of course, more than this, 



140 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

namely, a definite content, a particular system of 
thoughts, feelings, and volitions, in addition. This 
system, like any other particular combination in 
time, constitutes an object which arises and 
perishes, but which is knit together by the par- 
ticular memory-synthesis in question. The lapse 
of this particular actualisation of consciousness 
necessarily carries with it the destruction of the 
personality as a whole. Needless to say, this 
destruction in time does not touch the time-less 
Subject for which time itself is, which, although 
presupposed in every individual consciousness, 
is quoad such consciousness a mere potentiality. 
Psychological personality is the resultant of an 
infinitely complex and unstable series (or con- 
verging network of series) of real psycho-physical 
particulars in time and space. Physically, it is coin- 
cident with a particular organic system or animal 
body ; psychically, with a particular memory- 
synthesis. This content itself, therefore, the sub- 
ject-matter of psychological inquiry, falls, no less 
than the subject-matter of physiological inquiry, 
within the category of cause and effect. It has 
been calculated that if we trace any given case 
of this said object of psychological inquiry, any 
given personality, back for two centuries, we shall 
find it to be the outcome of some 16,000 more 
or less direct ancestors, that is, psycho-physical 
objects of the same kind as itself. Now, the dis- 
solution of these psycho-physical objects, together 
with the self-identifying memory-syntheses they 



INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 141 

imply, does not affect the principle at their basis. 
Yet, on the other hand, if the foregoing be ad- 
mitted, we can hardly view the definite lapse of 
the self-identifying memory-synthesis, and a for- 
tiori the dissolution of its content, whenever such 
takes place, as otherwise than complete and 
final. 

In psychology, which deals with the content 
of- the memory-synthesis, the antithesis between 

the alosfical and the logical is shown 

. . & , . b r 1. , Will and 

in the opposition between feeling and reason . 

thought, between will (viewed as mere 
impulse) and action following on reflection, 
between instinct and reason. The first and 
last word in psychology, as in metaphysic, is 
an indication of the alogical. The thought-out 
end presupposes the desire as mere blind im- 
pulse. The action as directed by reason has for 
its background the mere nisus of instinct. The 
feeling of psychology, hedonistic feeling — feeling, 
that is, which involves a pleasure-pain refer- 
ence — is the Alpha and Omega of psychology. 
Thought, reason, is the middle term only, always 
appearing as the handmaid of feeling in this 
sense. All human endeavour refers to practical 
postulates. The first term of all our activity 
is the nisus following on want, the last is the 
satisfaction of the want. As middle term we 
have, of course, the end defined by reason, and 
the means chosen by reason. Will itself, in 
psychology, we may regard as a mode merely 



142 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

of the self- identifying memory - synthesis, or, 
going farther back, we may conceive it from a 
metaphysical standpoint as identical with the 
eternal subject of consciousness itself. But, in 
any case, whether as psychological or meta- 
physical element, will falls to the alogical. It 
is the same with feeling. The material of 
thought, whether in a psychological or meta- 
physical sense, is feeling. It is a pleasure-pain 
feeling from which all our actions spring and out 
of which our active impulses grow. The present 
work is not a treatise on psychology, and hence 
we do not propose to pursue in detail the 
suggestions here indicated. The fundamental 
problem of ethics, which might conceivably 
have found a place in this chapter, will be 
more appropriately dealt with at a subsequent 
stage. 



V 

REALITY AND TRUTH 

In- the foregoing pages we have had much to say 
on the antithesis of the alogical and the logical 
as the most salient antithesis within 
the sphere of conscious reality. In ma ^ter* 
Chapter III. we traced the most im- potenti- 
portant modes in which this antithesis fJj^oJL. 
manifests itself. We also there dealt 
with two other antitheses that have played per- 
haps a more prominent part than any others 
in philosophy from Aristotle downwards. We 
refer to the antithesis of matter and form and 
that closely allied antithesis of potentiality and 
actuality. Conscious reality is also analysable 
into these pairs of opposites, and we make 
no excuse for recurring to the subject here, 
and amplifying what was there said, before 
passing on to the main object of this chapter, 
which is the distinction of reality itself from 
truth. 

The above antithesis (or pair of antitheses) 
is nearly covered by that between alogical and 
logical. Matter and the potential are usually 
referable to the alogical ; form and the actual 

*43 



144 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

usually to the logical. But there are one or two 
points where the coincidence is not exact, or at 
least where the usage of philosophic writers 
would make it undesirable to insist upon a too 
strict fixation of the terms in this sense. For 
example, I believe that the logical universal itself 
has been spoken of by some thinkers as the 
potentiality of the particulars coming under it. 
The point of view from which this is said is not 
difficult to understand, although I cannot myself 
regard it as justifiable. And this for the simple 
reason that the logical universal has no potency 
in it ; it is, as such, a mere form. The potency 
here lies in the at-once differentiating and 
unifying subject of consciousness itself, of which 
the alogical and the logical elements in the 
object are alike functions, but which nevertheless, 
in its immediacy, invariably falls to the side of 
the alogical. Matter and form (and the same 
may be said of potential and actual), as applied 
to the object of consciousness, constitute a purely 
relative pair of opposites that slide up and down 
the scale of real existence. The antithesis is not 
fixed throughout consciousness as is that between 
alogical and logical. The zVzformed matter of one 
stage becomes the matter per se of the next, 
in which it acquires a new and higher form. 
Aristotle's wpanj vXrj (pure matter), as such, 
undetermined to anything, is as much outside 
the synthesis of the real as is pure form, such, for 
instance, as the Platonic ideas. The nearest 



REALITY AND TRUTH 145 

approach we have to this Aristotelian " First 
matter " is in the " I " or subject that analysis 
discloses as presupposed in all experience. Even 
this elementary factor of knowledge, however, is 
at least so far formally determined, that we can 
say of it that it constitutes the possibility of 
consciousness} The caput mortuum of absolutely 
undetermined matter does not enter the purview 
of philosophy at all. 

It will be evident, I think, that the time- 
honoured antithesis of matter and form, as 

above said, at least roughly corre- 

, . , • 1 • Priority 

sponds with our own antithesis, as f matter 

formulated in this volume, of alogical and the 

and logical. Here also, throughout 

the history of philosophy, we may notice the 

working of the pallogistic fallacy, to wit, the 

disinclination, where not the actual refusal, to 

give a positive value to the presuppositional 

1 When most people hear the word " consciousness," they 
understand thereby consciousness as actual. They are fond of 
making it antithetical to the unconscious. From Leibnitz down- 
wards we have heard much of the " unconscious perception," &c, 
but this antithesis of consciousness and unconsciousness is, I take 
it, a spurious one — or at least, as regards terminology, a clumsy 
one. What is meant by conscious and unconscious is the dis- 
tinction between consciousness in its moment of actuality, and 
consciousness as potential merely. The " unconscious perception " 
is no less within the sphere of consciousness-in-general than is the 
conscious perception. The subject or ego for which the uncon- 
scious perception is, has as its sole attribute that of being the 
potentiality of consciousness ; its what-ness consists in that it is 
realisable as a conscious synthesis. Perceptibility itself is nothing 
but a possible mode of consciousness. Save as a mode of 

K 



146 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

element, as I might term it, of the synthesis 
of the real — namely, the material as opposed to 
the formal. For the majority of constructive 
thinkers positive significance alone attaches to the 
thought, or relational, element, as opposed to its 
alogical terms ; it is the formal element, as opposed 
to its material basis ; it is the actual, in contra- 
distinction to its potential implications, which, for 
the majority of the aforesaid thinkers, has alone 
had any positive significance. We find com- 
monly the attempt to argue away the one side of 
the antithesis. In this attempt more than one 
system has made shipwreck. For the fact remains 
that, in reality, not only is the one element of 
the antithesis as essential as the other, but the 
material, the potential, no less than the alogical, 
elements have, metaphysically, the primary value. 
The thought-relation presupposes relatable terms. 
Form presupposes matter to be z'^formed. The 

consciousness, the words "perceiving" or "perceived" have no 
meaning. The point of view we have spoken of as Pallogism, 
invariably has a tendency to hypostatise form at the expense of 
matter, the actual at the expense of the potential, no less than the 
logical at the expense of the alogical. Even Professor Bradley, 
who is not a pallogist pur sang, falls at times into the error — as it 
seems to me — of failing to recognise the true philosophic value of 
the potential as an element of reality. This tendency comes out 
as much in dealing with the sphere of phenomenality, that is, of 
the world of ordinary consciousness, as it does with that of 
metaphysics. For example, in Mr. Bradley's case he speaks 
("Appearance and Reality," pp. 332-33, foot-note) of the ab- 
solutely correct phrase " potential energy " as being, " strictly 
speaking, nonsense." This is undoubtedly the commonplace 
philosophic attitude towards the notion of potentiality. (Cf. 
Chapter III. p. 80 sqq.). 



REALITY AND TRUTH 147 

content of the actual moment only acquires its 
meaning through the potentiality of which it 
is the outcome. The purely negative value 
philosophers have been wont to ascribe to this 
side of experience is explained by the fact of 
its priority in value, within the conscious syn- 
thesis, to the thought, or formal element, or to 
that of immediacy or actuality ; whence it 
follows that for reflective thought it is only 
expressible by negatives. The logical can only 
indicate the relation between the that-ness or 
the what-ness of its terms, but can never touch 
either the that-ness or the what-ness, in itself. 
To take our old illustration, feeling, whether as 
mere sensation or as the pleasure-pain con- 
sciousness, can never be interpreted in terms of 
thought, and hence of language. It is merely 
by means of its relational activity, its categoris- 
ing function, that thought can express — or rather 
indicate — feeling, or the modes in which it mani- 
fests itself, as such. The feeling itself, in its 
own immediate inwardness, remains outside 
thought, and hence outside language. Reflec- 
tive thought glances off feeling, it falls away, 
like the proverbial water off the duck's back. 
Hence, to reflective thought — the dominant 
element of our intellectual life proper — feeling 
obtains merely as a negative other-ness. Thence 
arises the plausibility of the pallogistic and for- 
malistic tendencies hitherto prevalent in philo- 
sophic thought. These remarks lead up naturally 



148 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

to the special subject of our present chapter, 
namely, truth and reality. 1 

The word "reality," as implying the objective 2 
synthesis of experience, actual and possible, is 
Reality in one °^ ^ mos t constantly recurring 
popular expressions in modern philosophical 
sense. writings. It has the misfortune, how- 

ever, which it shares in common with most 
words in use in philosophy, to have been em- 
ployed loosely and in various senses by different 
thinkers. As we all know, for Kant, reality 
meant mere intensity of sensible quality — the 
more intense the qualitative sensation, the greater 
the reality, and vice versa. This is a sense, 
however, in which the word is, so far as I am 

1 It should perhaps once more be premised here that reality, 
as opposed to abstraction, is always identical with concreteness, 
that is, it implies a synthesis. It involves at least two elements. 
The synthesis cannot be reduced to less than the union of matter 
and form, of potentiality and actuality ; or to that of the cardinal 
antithetics, namely, the alogical and the logical, which to me seem 
more comprehensive than either of the two former pairs. Reality, 
then, viewed in this connection, means nothing but the inseparable 
correlation of at least two ultimate terms as factors. We can 
distinguish those two elements in reflection, but they cannot be 
presented in consciousness as separate. Each is by itself an ab- 
straction. As Ferrier of the "Institutes of Metaphysics" would 
have put it, something more than but less than 1. In their 
synthesis they constitute the real as such, in its barest and simplest 
expression. 

2 I here use the word "objective," not in the psychological 
sense as meaning exclusively something outside the individual 
mind in space, but in the more properly philosophical sense as 
meaning all that is distinguishable from the perceiving subject. 
In this sense, of course, an idea or a feltness, recognised as such, 
is objective. 



REALITY AND TRUTH 149 

aware, not used by any recent philosophic writer. 
But there are two distinct senses current at the 
present day which it is important to keep dis- 
tinguished. The first sense referred to is that 
which I have in the present work in general 
termed common-sense reality, that is, reality as 
ordinary perception of external things. This is 
emphatically the popular sense of the word 
"reality." To the man-in-the-street that is real 
which exists in time and space as perceived or 
perceivable, apart from the particularity of his 
own personal consciousness. Hence for him the 
typal form of reality is the world of common- 
sense, the world of perceived and perceivable 
objects in space, into which he enters as one 
individual among many. As we pointed out in 
a former chapter, 1 the man-in-the-street is very 
careful to limit the reality of the sensible world 
to the horizon of common perception. Any 
purely psychological or personal element that this 
common-sense reality may acquire in the course 
of familiarity with it on the part of the individual 
mind, is excluded from reality as not answering 
to the test of being common to all percipients. 2 
This, the reality sans phrase of the ordinary 

1 See pp. 106-108. 

2 There is, of course, a difficulty in deciding between the view 
taken by different individuals, or even by the same individual at 
different times, or under different circumstances, as to what is 
predicable of reality. This does not really affect our main argu- 
ment, but is perhaps worth calling attention to at the present 
juncture. What, for instance, is the reality of a historical period — 
say, the Middle Ages — as seen through the psychological lens of 



150 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

man, is a perfectly legitimate use of the word 
also in a philosophical discussion. 

There is, however, a special philosophical 
sense, in which Mr. Bradley uses it in his 
" Appearance and Reality," although not peculiar 
to him, which is exceedingly important. This 
philosophical sense is connected with the popular 
interpretation of the term reality that we have 

contemporaries, or of the scholar of a later time ? And of con- 
temporaries, does it appear the same to the feudal villain, to his 
lord, to the cleric, and to the burgher ? We have psychological 
refraction in all these cases ; each sees the period from a different 
point of view, but which are we to assume as the nearest to reality ? 
To the mind of a scholar of a later age, again, the period presents 
itself in a light in which it could never have appeared to any con- 
temporaries ; and, assuming the scholar to be a man of powerful 
imagination (a Scott or a Flaubert), are we to regard his recon- 
struction as in any way nearer the reality than the conception of 
an ignorant contemporary whose outlook was limited ? Is that 
conception of the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the 
twentieth century, which is the product of the memory-synthesis 
of a London costermonger, more real or less real than that of an 
Oxford graduate, or are they, either of them, more or less real 
than that of a scholar of a subsequent century will be, who sees 
our age in the light of the later evolution of events, and whose 
perspective is naturally modified accordingly ? This problem 
is after all essentially of the same character as the puzzle of 
one's childhood — what was the real size of any object. Was the 
real table the table one saw when one's face was pressed against 
it, or was it the table one looked at twelve inches away, or the 
table as it appeared from the other end of the hall, or looking 
down the well of the staircase ? It would be interesting, by the 
way, to know which of these hypotheses the partisans of the theory 
of an external world, independent of consciousness, would adopt. 
To the idealist or the metaphysician the problem offers no special 
difficulties. For to him reality is something fluid, not fixed ; it 
contains within it an infinite potentiality, and hence can never 
become finally definite. 



REALITY AND TRUTH 151 

already mentioned, but is much wider in scope — 

in fact, may be said to include the latter. 

According to the philosophical usage 

1 , r ,. ' ~ Reality in 

here spoken 01, reality means periec- pniloso- 

tion or completeness, relative or abso- Phical 
lute ; the reality of any object in time 
implies that object at its fullest development. 
The reality of the individual man is that man in 
the prime of life and health, neither in childhood, 
nor in adolescence, nor in senility, nor in illness 
— the man at the zenith of his powers. Similarly 
the reality of the flower is not the seed, the shoot, 
or the bud, nor yet the flower when dropping its 
petals in decay, but the flower in full bloom. In 
fact, reality in this sense coincides as nearly as 
possible with the thing in its ideal perfection. 
Hence, in metaphysics, the ultimate reality 
is equivalent to the Absolute, the assumed 
totality in which all terms and all relations are 
thought as absorbed, outside which nothing is or 
can be. But it is obvious that in reality taken in 
this sense there are degrees, and in this question 
of degrees the connection between the ordinary 
common-sense view of reality and the philo- 
sophical view comes in. From the point of 
view of theory-of-knowledge (epistemology), the 
outer world of ordinary consciousness is merely a 
definite stadium in the genetic synthesis of con- 
sciousness-in-general, while for practical needs it 
is the only type or norm of reality possible. 
Below it in the genetic order of the conscious 



152 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

synthesis you have inchoate elements merely, 
which only attain completion in the world as 
perceived, that is, in common experience. On 
the other hand, any synthesis richer in content 
than that of our common experience, falls from 
the point of view of the latter to the side of the 
ideal, as a construction of the individual mind. 
Philosophy indeed destroys the complacent con- 
fidence of the man-in-the-street in the exclusive 
claim of this common-sense world to the title of 
reality ; and, in fact, from both sides it can show 
that the common-sense world itself is but a 
synthesis of sensible and intelligible elements. 
On the other hand, it can also show that this so 
solid-seeming world that forms the content of 
everyday experience, only requires to be closely 
analysed to disclose itself as a mass of contradic- 
tions — a piece of rubble masonry, in fact. When 
viewed in this light its reality ceases to be so 
imposing as it is to the man-in-the-street, not- 
withstanding that its serviceability as "practical 
postulate " for ordinary human purposes remains 
unimpaired. From the same point of view it is 
very easy to show, as many thinkers have done, 
that, being neither consistent, complete, in- 
dependent, nor an end in itself, it forces us 
forward to the assumption that it is not ultimate, 
but simply an imperfect phase of a larger and 
higher unity than itself. The term reality, in the 
sense we are discussing, emphasises the fact of 
the impermanence, as such, of every phase it may 



REALITY AND TRUTH 153 

assume, and this applies as much to any sensible 
reality in space as to reality viewed from a meta- 
physical standpoint. The formed matter, the 
synthesis of one phase, becomes the unformed 
matter to be carried up into a new synthesis in 
the next, and here comes in the Hegelian 
trichotomy, which is essentially the Aristotelian 
process of matter, form, and their reciprocal 
synthesis, or (as we may translate it into the at- 
once more definite and more comprehensive 
terms suggested in this book) into the alogical 
and the logical, the unity of which constitutes 
reality in its most general sense. \ 

It is easy to see the temptation to Pallogism 
that lurks in this trichotomy, whether it take the 
form of the Hegelian logic or of the 

Aristotelian metaphysic. The pro- ^Il ogisin 
r J r onee more. 

gression of the apperceptive syntheses, 
in each of which these two factors are discover- 
able, leads to the illusion that the alogical can be 
finally absorbed and abolished in the logical ; 
that matter must, in the ultimate reality, be 
eliminated by being transcended in an ideal- 
formal synthesis ; that the potential loses its 
independence and disappears in the actual ; that 
feeling and will exhaust themselves in an ineffable 
consciousness of pure intelligibles, in a word, of 
pure knowledge and final satisfaction. (Compare 
the ideals of various religious systems, the Ewige 
Glanze, the Beatific Vision, the "ecstasy" of the 
mystic, &c.) An analysis of reality, whether as 



154 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

a whole or in any one of its infinite partial mani- 
festations, never discloses any approach to the 
transcendence of the alogical by the logical, of 
the matter by the form. What those who, under 
whatever disguise, adopt the pallogistic attitude 
fail to see, is that the moment they have 
transcended, in a word, got rid of, one of the 
elements of reality, they have got rid of reality 
itself, seeing that, as used, alike in common- 
sense and in philosophy, the term reality implies 
a conscious synthesis, and hence necessarily in- 
volves at least two elements. Reduced to its 
simplest expression, we have found these elements 
in the general synthesis of reality, viewed alike 
per se or in any of its special phenomenal mani- 
festations, to disclose themselves as the antithesis 
of alogical and logical, an antithesis that is in the 
main covered by the Aristotelian antitheses of 
matter and form, potentiality and actuality. The 
moment you dissolve the synthesis by separating 
these antithetic aspects, the moment you sacrifice 
one of them, you have the caput mortuum of an 
abstraction left. The reality, the synthesis, has 
disappeared, and this hypostatised abstraction 
has taken its place. This is the case, though 
often concealed under plausible guises, with all 
systems of a pallogistic tendency. Such a hypos- 
tatised abstraction, for instance, was the vovs 
iroirjTiKos of Aristotle, perhaps the unica substantia 
of Spinoza, and certainly the Idee of Hegel, in 
addition to the classical instance in the history 



REALITY AND TRUTH 155 

of philosophy, the Platonic Idea, universalia ante 
rem. 

But although the polarity of the basal anti- 
thesis is essential to every real, and no less so 
to ultimate reality itself, if we admit such, yet it 
may be possible to predicate a certain priority 
of significance for one pole of this antithesis as 
against the other. By this priority of significance 
I mean the stress of presupposition, and here, I 
contend, from the metaphysical elements of all 
experience, down or up (as we may choose to 
term the process), to the most concrete of apper- 
ceived contents, the logical-formal element in- 
variably presupposes the alogical -material element, 
in a manner in which the converse does not hold 
good. To take an illustration from the root of 
all things. The object — the side of the primary 
conscious synthesis to which logical determination 
falls — presupposes that mere alogical power of 
consciousness which we distinguish as the sub- 
ject per se, in a more thorough and unconditional 
manner than the subject presupposes the object. 
A bare subject without object may be unimagin- 
able, but it is not in the same way impossibly 
absurd as is the bare object cut off from the 
subject. In other words, a system of felt, 
thought, and willed determinations without a 
feeler, thinker, or wilier, is a sheer contradic- 
tion in terms. The object itself is, in the last 
resort, metaphysically deducible from the subject. 
The thought -feltness, which we term object, 



156 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

clearly has its raison cfitre in the feeling and 
thinking agency or subject. Hence the alogical 
(here the primordial subject) has clearly a pre- 
suppositional value, from the metaphysical point 
of view, superior to that of the logically-deter- 
mined object. 

To take an illustration from the physical world, 
life or organisation presupposes inorganic physical 
substance as its basis. The living thing does 
not exist apart from the form of life itself, apart, 
that is, from the laws or logical categories 
determining organisation, but life, apart from 
living matter, is an impossible absurdity. Life, 
in short, is an objective fact, having for its pre- 
supposition physical matter sans phrase. Now, 
quoad the special category involved in living 
matter, the mere physical substance at its basis 
is alogical. The difference, of course, between our 
metaphysical and the above physical illustration 
lies in the fact that in the latter the alogi- 
cality is only relative. The physical substance 
constituting the ultimate matter of the living 
organism can be itself reduced as an objective 
reality under the categories of inorganic matter. 
You can destroy an animal body and chemically 
resolve it into its inorganic elements — which 
elements, nevertheless, have a real existence. 
When we are dealing with metaphysical principles, 
the case is otherwise. The ultimate alogical 
subject at the root of the primary synthesis 
of consciousness has meaning and value only 



REALITY AND TRUTH 157 

as element of the synthesis itself. Per se it 
can never become invested with reality. Our 
point ought now to be sufficiently clear, namely, 
that the alogical in any real synthesis has always 
an implicatory priority of value over the logical 
form that converts it into reality, whether ulti- 
mate, as in the case of metaphysical principles, 
or derivative, as in the case of physical pro- 
ducts. 

But it is not merely when considered as 
elementary factor of reality that this presup- 
positional priority of value attaches to p r i or ityof 
the alogical. Analysing reality by the value of 
method known as that of the Hegelian al °£ ieaL 
trichotomy, we view it as position, negative 
apposition, and synthetic unity of these two 
terms, this process obtaining alike in every 
special case of reality and in reality considered 
in its widest and simplest aspect as determina- 
tion of experience in general. In the synthesis 
itself, viewed as completed whole, we find the 
alogical again the dominant factor. This is 
especially noticeable from the point of view of 
psychology and epistemology. The focus, so 
to say, of the reality of the thing, rests in its 
alogical, its felt but inexpressible, particularity. 
In will, the touchstone of motive is always 
feeling, and the desire or realised end is always 
feeling. Reason, the logical determination of 
the value of motive and end, is the handmaid 
merely of feeling. We cannot reason feeling 



158 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

into existence or out of existence. No logical 
process can exorcise the given immediacy of 
feeling, any more than the given particularity 
of the felt object ; although, of course, this 
given particularity may evoke the logical pro- 
cess. This side of the question, however, will 
fall to be fully dealt with in discussing the ethical 
and aesthetic consciousness, when the questions 
of motives, ends, and ideals, can suitably be 
treated in greater detail. 

We have thus far, throughout the present 
chapter, discussed the question of reality from 
certain points of view, either not at all, or only 
casually, touched upon, in the previous portions 
of this work. In the remainder of this chapter 
we shall have to consider the notion of truth, 
as to its distinction from reality, as to its inner 
meaning and significance, and as to its test. 

The main distinction between truth and reality 

is that, whereas in reality we are concerned with 

m ., the alogical as well as with the logical, in 

Truth not . & ... , . ., 

identical truth we are dealing, at least primarily, 

with with the logical alone. Furthermore, 

while in reality we have the logical 

in its first intention — to use the scholastic phrase 

— in truth we have the logical in its second 

intention, as reflected in the mind. Hence truth 

can never be identical with reality. Truth is 

always abstract as being concerned essentially 

with logical notions, whereas reality is concrete ; 

it represents the synthetic union of the alogical 



REALITY AND TRUTH 159 

and the logical. In truth, therefore, reality is 
always transformed. The alogical of the real 
object disappears, and is replaced by a thought- 
form — a more or less arbitrary symbol of itself. 
This symbol works all very well up to a certain 
point for practical purposes, but beyond that 
point it breaks down, and we get into the well- 
known antinomies, insoluble contradictions, or 
impossibilities of thought, as we may choose 
to term them. 

In this connection we may observe that the 
time-honoured philosophical theory of " things- 
in-themselves," outside all consciousness, may be 
traced back to the inability of reflective thought 
to deal adequately with the alogical. All that 
has to do with relations between alogical terms 
it can fully master, but, being pure thought, 
it cannot get inside the alogical terms them- 
selves. It can compass the relation between 
subject and object, from its most general meta- 
physical expression up to its most complex form 
as relation between individual mind and outer 
world. It can also compass the manifold and 
complex relations between objects themselves. 
But it cannot penetrate the alogical. It cannot 
interpret in its own language feeling or feltness 
(sensation) itself. It cannot penetrate the par- 
ticular or individual as such. It cannot com- 
prehend that infinity of particulars which its 
own universals presuppose. Hence these things, 
the alogical per se, are to reflective thought, of 



160 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

which philosophy is the highest expression, 
necessarily a captit mortuum, outside its own 
range, and which it can, for the most part, 
only indicate by negative definitions. Here, I 
think, we have the fount and origin of the 
thing-in-itself, the noumenon, the unknowable, 
&c. These and similar expressions represent 
simply endeavours to indicate and seize, in 
thought, the alogical in its inwardness, and 
apart from its connection with thought as com- 
plementary element in the synthetic unity we call 
the real. 

Just as the word reality is used in different 
senses, so is truth. To the ordinary man 
Various truth means the correspondence be- 
senses of tween the reproduction in imagination, 
truth. or fae statement in words, of a thing 

or event and the thing or event itself. Truth 
is, for him, usually of the nature of a "practical 
postulate," and his chief concern is that the 
correspondence shall be such as shall satisfy his 
practical needs. This at one end of the scale. 
For science, the standard of truth is, that the 
formulae of reflective thought that it employs, 
shall be capable of re-translation into terms of 
reality, and vice versa, in any given case, on 
demand. This, at least, is the theoretical postu- 
late of scientific thought. Philosophy demands 
more of truth than this. Like science, it ex- 
presses truth in the abstract terms of reflective 
thought, only more so. It aims at an adequate 



REALITY AND TRUTH 161 

interpretation of universal reality by reflective 
thought in its own terms, but one that shall 
correspond to that reality in a manner to satisfy 
the individual mind. There is one thing com- 
mon to all senses of the word truth, and that 
is, that the ultimate test of truth, is the self- 
consistency of consciousness. Where, in every- 
day life, a report does not tally with the fact 
reported, the self- consistency of consciousness 
is violated. Where a scientific formula is con- 
tradicted at any point by the reality it is supposed 
to represent, there the self-consistency of con- 
sciousness is also violated. By the self-consis- 
tency of consciousness is meant the consistency 
of consciousness, considered as a whole, with 
itself, wherever and whenever the test is applied. 
This does not invalidate the fact that in every 
process of consciousness a contradiction lies em- 
bedded, based on the antithetic character of its 
two ultimate elements, the mark of which we 
have found to consist respectively in alogicality 
and logicality. This contradiction, as Hegel in 
his own way has pointed out, belongs to the 
life and movement of reality considered as pro- 
cess, or as incomplete. But the contradiction 
qud contradiction, nevertheless, disappears in 
every completed synthesis as such, whether of 
consciousness as a whole or of any special organic 
phase of consciousness, for the very essence of 
such is consistency within itself. 

It is important in this connection to distinguish 

L 



i62 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

between the alogical and illogicality. Where 
you have what is commonly termed a contradictio 
Adistine- ^ n ac fy' ec t°> or a "contradiction in 
tiontobe terms," within a logical process itself, 
noted. y QUj h ave illogicality. The contradic- 

tion of the Hegelian dialectic is of quite a different 
character to this. It is not, like the latter, a 
contradiction immanent in one side of the real 
synthesis, but a contradiction arising from the 
intrinsic disparity between the two sides or ele- 
ments of the synthesis. This disparity can only 
be envisaged by reflective thought, working, as 
it necessarily does, through categories, as an at 
least continuous, if not endless, process of the 
surging up and resolution of contradictions. 

We have defined the test of truth as the self- 
consistency of consciousness. But neither truth 
nor its test is something fixed once 

of truth? nS and for alh Truth ' as the re P res en- 
tative of reality in the sphere of reflec- 
tive thought, has gradations like reality itself, and 
corresponding to it. The highest truth stands 
for the most complete expression of those de- 
terminations of consciousness we term reality. 
Truth means, then, the expression in the forms 
of reflective thought, of the highest realisation 
of a given synthesis, the most perfect expression 
of the reality of a given plane of consciousness. 
It is the alogical in every real synthesis that 
forces forward to a new reality, and thus is 
perpetually falsifying truth. There is no con- 



REALITY AND TRUTH 163 

ceivable formulation of the nature of things that 
cannot be transcended by a more adequate formu- 
lation. Hence a "truth" is only absolute for 
its own plane and for those below it. Other- 
wise, by its very nature it becomes, that is, it 
evolves from within itself, a higher truth, in 
respect of which it becomes itself falsehood. 

The " highest " truth, then, if we are dealing 
with the ultimate nature of consciousness, as in 
philosophy, would be identical with 

absolute truth, but below or within this Special 

1 • r truth, 

all-comprehensive aspect we find in- 
finite gradations of relative truth. Thus every 
department of knowledge has its special "truth." 
The truth of physics is not precisely the truth 
of chemistry. The truth of chemistry is just as 
little the truth of physiology. The truth of 
physiology again differs from the truth of social 
science. Truth, in this scientific sense, is largely 
coincident with the system of the laws of a given 
science. The confusion between these relative 
truths of science, and their misapplication, have 
been often recognised as a fruitful source of 
fallacy. ^ 

Meanwhile, let us pass in review more closely 
the three senses in which the word "truth" is 
used, but for all of which the self-con- The tputh 
sistency of consciousness affords the ofeommon- 
ultimate test. Truth in the first sense sense - 
is bound up with the concrete mental image of 
sensible reality, and, as such, it is truth in its 



1 64 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

lowest meaning. This is truth in the popular 
sense, the sense in which little boys are told to 
"speak the truth." Here we have an instance 
of simple and crude correspondence, usually 
speaking, between the psychological order of 
ideas and the perceptive order of things in 
space. In the example taken, when we demand 
that the small boy shall speak the truth, we 
inculcate upon him that he shall not call up 
in our minds ideas — using the word "idea" here, 
not in the sense of abstract notion, but of con- 
crete mental image — having no counterpart in 
the world of spacial perceivedness, while alleging 
that they have such a counterpart. We mean 
that he should not call up such a mental image 
or series of mental images in our mind, coupled 
with a judgment that these images correspond 
to a perceptual happening in space. Such is 
the typical and most common case of truth in 
this lowest and everyday sense of the term. 1 

Truth in the scientific sense does not neces- 
sarily postulate the correspondence between a 
mental image and something else outside itself, 

1 In the illustration given we have referred to a happening in 
space. We need scarcely say that this is not a sine qua non of 
the matter. To pursue our illustration, the mental image called 
up by the boy might be just as well something concerning the 
workings of his own mind. He might allege that he had forgotten 
something that he had not forgotten, and vice versa. Here he 
evokes in us the mental image of acts of forgetfulness within our 
own mental experience, conjoined with the false judgment by which 
we identify them with the state of his mind at the juncture in 
question. 



REALITY AND TRUTH 165 

as does truth in the above popular sense. The 
essence of scientific truth is that it transforms 
common-sense reality in the light of 
abstract conceptions. Any mental ^LS^ 
image that is involved is altogether 
subsidiary. In fact, the mental image is often 
rather disturbing than otherwise to the appre- 
hension of scientific truth. In mathematics it 
is' admitted that no mental image formed, say, 
of the geometrical configurations of space can 
correspond with accuracy to the figures postu- 
lated by geometry (points, lines, circles, &c). 
Again, we cannot help, when we speak of a 
molecule, of an atom, or of ether, forming by 
analogy some sort of mental image of these 
ultimate factors of the world of physical science. 
Yet we are perfectly well aware that any mental 
image arrived at in this way begins and ends 
with itself, that it corresponds with nothing out- 
side itself. It is true, of course, that in geometry 
the clumsy attempts of mental imagery to bring 
these configurations of pure space before the 
mind may, properly discounted, be of assistance 
in dealing with the problems peculiar to this 
science. But, on the other hand, for the appre- 
hension of physical truth the mental image 
involuntarily formed of molecule, atom, or ether, 
leads undoubtedly to direct misconceptions, and 
hence, as above said, is a hindrance rather than 
otherwise to accuracy of apprehension. Scien- 
tific truth reduces the world of sensible reality 



1 66 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

to a system of abstract categories. The mere 
pseudo-picture it makes of a transformed sense- 
world is entirely subsidiary thereto. It is very 
little more than the tailor's block (so to say) 
that it uses for the display of its system of 
categories or laws. 

Truth, in the highest sense of the word, that 
is, the truth of philosophy, means the complete 
apprehension of the world through the 
philosophy me dium of thought-forms. The truth 
of philosophy is the truth common to 
all other departments of knowledge, inasmuch as 
it is the truth involved in the conditions of know- 
ledge itself. Philosophy aims at a perfect for- 
mulation of reality in the abstract terms of 
reflective thought ; this aim is, however, im- 
possible of attainment. However much we may 
approximate thereto, we can never attain to and 
grasp truth in its entirety in this manner. No 
formulation in terms of the abstractions of re- 
flection can ever correspond exactly to the 
requirements of the complete self-consistency of 
consciousness. The ground of this lies in the 
fact that the alogical element, which is the basis 
of reality, and which interpenetrates reality, can- 
not be expressed, but can only be indicated — 
that is, symbolised — by the forms of abstract 
thought. It is this alogical element at the basis 
of reality, this "power behind the throne" of the 
transformed world in which philosophic truth 
consists, that prevents the formulation from ever 



REALITY AND TRUTH 167 

becoming perfect and, so to say, rounded off. 
The reality of things and of mental processes, 
their evolution in time, continually forces us on 
to a readjustment, a re-formulation, of the world- 
problem and its solution. In a word, philosophic 
truth must always be relative. In philosophic 
truth, as in other aspects of truth, the corre- 
spondence of truth with reality never amounts to 
more than an approximation. But what in philo- 
sophy, as in science, we mean by truth is the 
formula expressing the nearest approximation up 
to date to the self-consistency of consciousness. 
Hence no system of philosophy, no formulation 
nor solution of the world-problem, can be final. 
Absolute truth in the philosophic sense, that is, 
a formulation adequately expressing, under the 
notions of reflective thought, reality throughout 
its complete range, for all time, is an impossible 
and absurd chimera. A system of philosophy, 
in the last resort, like a work of art, is the hand- 
maid of feeling. For, indeed, every metaphysical 
formulation has as its end the satisfaction of 
personal feeling. It may wear the guise of a 
purely logical construction, but its final telos is, 
no less than that of a work of art, the satisfaction 
of a certain complex feeling or emotion. It 
is a customary convention to term the ideal of 
philosophy truth, the ideal of art beauty, and 
the ideal of conduct goodness ; but, in the 
broadest sense, these are only parts of one ideal, 
the ultimate harmony or self- consistency of 



168 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

consciousness with itself, of the form with the 
content, of the alogical with the logical, of the 
potential with the actual. 

Here again the fallacy of Pallogism comes into 
view. Nothing is more common in philosophy 
Another than what is sometimes termed In- 
phase of tellectualism, by which I understand 
Pallogism. t ^e attribution to reason, as such, of 
an aesthetic or ethical value. In Plato we find it 
expressed in its baldest form, but the tendency 
runs through most synthetic thinkers up to 
modern times. With Spinoza, for example, the 
constitution of reason, of pure intellect, as the 
final goal of all things, is very conspicuous. His 
phrase in this connection, the "intellectual love of 
God" (Amor intellectualis Dei) is well known. 
For Spinoza, the goal of ethics is the raising of 
the individual consciousness to the standpoint of 
pure, passionless, intellectual insight. In and 
through this, the individual, in proportion as he 
attains it, achieves one-ness with the Absolute. 
Yet one would think it was easy to see that this 
point of view is abstract and one-sided — that, 
after all, the intellectual insight that leads to a 
supersession of passion in the lower and more 
partial sense, is itself only the handmaid of 
passion or emotion in the higher and fuller sense, 
which passion or emotion may also receive its 
satisfaction through other means than the re- 
lational activity of pure intellect. 

The aesthetic consciousness with its ideal of 



REALITY AND TRUTH 169 

beauty, the ethical consciousness with its ideal of 
goodness, love, or whatever we may choose to call 
it, have also their parts to play in this connection 
no less than the reflective consciousness with its 
ideal of truth. To talk of " intellectual love," 
as Spinoza does, is a misuse of language. One 
might almost as correctly talk of "long depth" 
or "broad height." Intellectual insight, con- 
ceived at its highest, as the complete compre- 
hension of all possible relations in a systematic 
logical unity, could never give us, intrinsically, 
anything beyond itself. The emotional satisfac- 
tion derived from a completeness of knowledge 
in this sense has an exclusively intellectual con- 
tent. If we put aside the sense of symmetry and 
harmony which an intellectual construction of 
the universe brings with it, and which, as we have 
already indicated, places it en rapport with the 
aesthetic ideal — thereby giving it, in a sense, an 
aesthetic value — the content per se is not a true 
aesthetic content, while still less does it possess 
any ethical value. Mere logical truth, although 
it may be an essential element in the final goal of 
experience, can never by itself furnish the com- 
plete satisfaction that this goal implies. 

To sum up, we have found that reality, apart 
from its barest philosophic significance as in- 
volving a synthesis, is used with two chief 
meanings as opposed to abstraction, the one its 
ordinary meaning, and the other more specially 
philosophical. These two meanings, though 



i;o THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

seemingly divergent, are essentially not so. The 

ordinary sense of the word reality is that of the 

outer world of sensible objects in space 

of dmpter anc * t * me t * lat f° rms tne content of our 
perceptive consciousness. This is the 
norm, or standard, of reality, for everyday life. 
The philosophical use of the word is more com- 
prehensive, and also more elastic. In its more 
specially technical application, the word means 
the highest expression of the essence of any 
given thing or of the world as a whole. In this 
sense it does not mean mere concreteness as 
opposed to abstractness, but the highest perfec- 
tion of any given concrete, or of the universe 
conceived as a totality. The reality of the flower 
is in this sense that of the flower at the moment 
of its fullest expansion, the reality of the man 
being similarly that of the man in the perfection 
of his powers. In short, that final stage or 
condition of anything to which all other stages 
have led up, or to which they are contributing, is 
its reality. Thus the Absolute, if it is to be 
postulated as the highest expression of reality, 
must be viewed as that infinite consciousness as 
regards which the content of each and every 
individual consciousness is but a more or less 
partial aspect. The latter's full significance could 
only be apprehended from the point of view of 
this supreme consciousness. Reality in this 
sense, therefore, means always fulness or per- 
fection, whether relative or absolute. But, as 



REALITY AND TRUTH 171 

pointed out, this philosophical use of the word 
reality does not essentially clash with its ordinary 
use. The man-in-the-street calls the outer world 
— the content of his waking perceptive conscious- 
ness, working through the forms of space and 
time — reality. In so doing he confines the world 
to that plane or stadium of consciousness that is 
of most obvious importance (to himself) for 
everyday life and its practical concerns. This 
common-sense reality is also a perfection and 
completion, the perfection and completion of the 
inchoate sensations and the bare thought-forms 
of which it is constructed, and which disclose 
themselves to metaphysical analysis. It is the 
most salient stadium of consciousness in its self- 
unfolding, and as such is a degree in reality of the 
first importance. Hence it will be seen that the 
common usage of the term and its special philo- 
sophical sense are not at all at variance. 

Truth, we have shown, is distinguished from 
reality in that in truth, considered as truth, 
the alogical element, the foundation various 
of life and reality, is absent. Truth forms of 
has at least three easily distinguish- ru * 
able connotations. It always involves the notion 
of correspondence between the psychological 
order and an order that is more than psycho- 
logical. The ultimate test of truth, as often 
enough here insisted on, is the consistency 
of consciousness with itself. We have truth as 
to matter-of-fact, which presupposes the corre- 



172 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

spondence of certain mental images with events 
in space, or with the inner workings of an indi- 
vidual mind. We have the " truths " of science, 
which in the main coincide (respectively) with 
the systems of laws or categories peculiar to each 
department of science. We have also " scientific 
truth " as a whole, which means the harmonisa- 
tion of the laws or categories of special depart- 
ments under certain wider thought-forms that 
include them. 1 Finally, we have philosophic 
truth, in the true sense, which aims at em- 
bracing in reflective thought, under the most 
comprehensive formula possible, all conscious 
experience. In this way it seeks, under the 
forms of reflection, to arrive at the ultimate 
meaning of reality itself. The immediate test 
of truth as to matter-of-fact lies in the corre- 
spondence between a mental image and some 
form of happening, either in the perceptual world 
of space, or in the workings of some individual 
mind. The immediate test of scientific truth is 
its correspondence with reality at every point to 
which it is possible to apply it, and whenever we 
choose to apply it. But the only test of philo- 
sophic truth (and in the last resort the test of 
truth also in the other senses named) is the 
self-consistency of consciousness. The aim of 
philosophy is the supreme and most intimate 

1 Scientific truth as a complete body of doctrine, as distinguished 
from the respective truths of the different sciences, has been some- 
times termed " cosmic philosophy." 



REALITY AND TRUTH 173 

satisfaction of aspiration towards the unity and 
harmony of consciousness in all phases from the 
lowest to the highest. This necessarily involves 
the inclusion of the telos of all consciousness 
in the theory that is designed to embody this 
harmony for reflective consciousness. 

But reflective thought is not the only aspect of 
consciousness under which reality, as primarily 
given, becomes transformed and ac- 
quires a higher value. In the art-con- higher 
sciousness this is also the case, and values of 
the emotion of aspiration above spoken 
of seeks satisfaction here immediately under the 
forms of sensibility and perception. The aim of 
art, in its highest manifestations, is to express the 
unity and harmony of experience, together with 
its final goal, in the world of immediate feeling — 
in a word, alogically. As to any ultimate goal of 
conduct, this also would seem, in the last resort, 
to have none but an aesthetic significance. Char- 
acter, if not viewed as a , means to some end 
other than itself, but merely looked at in itself, 
has a purely aesthetic value. The measure of 
"goodness" in character is the degree in which 
it expresses to our moral consciousness, in the 
forms of conduct (justice, duty, sympathy, &c), 
the same unity and harmony of consciousness 
with itself — considered as process and as end — 
which philosophy seeks to embody in the logical 
values of reflective thought, and art in the alogical 
values of perceptive feeling. 



VI 

THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 

The philosophic, the aesthetic, and the ethical 
consciousness have this much in common, that 
they are severally concerned with the 
iEsthette 1C ' at tempt to merge the many in the one, 
andEthieal the qualitative particular in the uni- 
Conseious- versal< The per f ection witn which this 

is done is the test of their several 
11 values." The aim of all three is to eliminate 
quantitative particularity, to raise consciousness 
above the mere endlessness of repetition, with the 
differential imperfection attaching to each instance 
of this repetition — to raise it to a point at which 
this quantitative particularity, the salient feature 
in the reality of common-sense, has disappeared, 
or at least has lost all significance. 1 Their aim is 
to unite with universality the qualitative side of 
particularity, its tkisness, without which there is 
no life, but only " bloodless categories." Science 
and a fortiori philosophy seek to attain this 
synthesis in their own medium of the logical rela- 
tion as transformed by reflective thought. The 

1 For the general discussion of the antithesis of particular and 
universal, see Chapter III. on " The Alogical and the Logical." 

*74 



THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 175 

ultimate goal of philosophy is the perfect and 
most adequate expression of reality in the terms 
of reflection. But in this attempt, however suc- 
cessfully universality may be attained, it is so at 
the expense of the tkisness, the immediacy, the 
life, constituting the marrow of the "world and 
the soul" in their "first intention." The salient 
point about a logical relation, a thought-form, is 
that it is purely discursive — that it has no tkisness. 
Hence the sense of emotional satisfaction accom- 
panying the contemplation of reality as trans- 
formed by reflective thought into scientific, and 
to a still greater extent, philosophic, truth, must 
be ascribed to the fact that we impart something 
foreign thereto in our mental attitude, to wit, the 
feeling of harmony, symmetry, and perfection 
derived from the aesthetic consciousness with its 
alogical content of sense. For it is clear, and we 
hardly need labour the point, that emotional satis- 
faction can only grow out of the soil of tkisness 
or immediacy — in a word, out of the soil of life. 
Mere " bloodless categories," scientific or philo- 
sophic, can never be food for emotion of any kind 
whatever. But every transformation of reality 
by the mind into the terms of its own reflective 
consciousness necessarily means its transformation 
into abstractions, that is, into some form of the 
logical universal. We have seen that the latter 
observation applies even to what are, considered 
per se, purely alogical elements of the real syn- 
thesis. These also, as indicated in the reflective 



176 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

consciousness, necessarily, so to speak, take on 
its colour ; and are presented, therefore, in the 
guise of concepts, or, if we prefer to call them so 
as being more strictly accurate, as pseudo-concepts. 
For example, if we speak of sensation as a whole 
or of any special modification of sensation, such 
as colour, hardness, sweetness, we have thereby 
transformed what, as originally given, is a purely 
alogical factor in our experience into a pseudo- 
concept. All thought and a fortiori all language 
have to be carried on in universals, that is, under 
thought-forms. Hence, even when dealing with 
intrinsically non-conceptual, alogical elements, 
thought cannot choose but indicate them in the 
terms and under the conditions prescribed by its 
own relational activity. I say indicate them, for 
in the nature of the case it cannot adequately 
express them as it can express a principle, a rela- 
tion, a law, a formula, &c. From the foregoing, 
therefore, the reader will clearly see that a philo- 
sophical construction, as such, is always concerned 
with thought-forms — if not with concepts that 
adequately express real relations, then at least 
with pseudo-concepts that inadequately indicate 
the alogical terms of these relations apart from 
the relations themselves. 

Philosophy may be not inaptly defined as the 
last word of the logical. It cannot, as we have 
often enough had occasion to insist, get beyond 
universals or abstractions. Even when it seeks to 
deduce the individual, it is always concerned with 



THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 177 

the universalised individual, with the synthesis 
of those general conditions that the thisness of 
the particular individual presupposes, Thelimit 
but is not. The impossibility of the of the 
logical, as such, expressing the alogi- l0 £ ieal - 
cal, remains, but in philosophy the logical is 
pushed to its extreme limits, to the point at 
which it transcends itself. Although philosophy 
as philosophy cannot touch the alogical, yet it can 
show us the boundary of the logical, the point of 
contact, so to say, with the alogical. For the in- 
strument of philosophy is language, and language 
is the exponent, where not of true concepts, at 
least of pseudo-concepts, v The aim of philoso- 
phical terminology is directly to express thought- 
relations, and not like the language of poetry 
indirectly to evoke feeling by means of sugges- 
tion. Yet the analogy between philosophy and 
poetry, which has often been remarked upon, is 
undoubted, and rests upon the fact that the last 
word of philosophy is a hint at conveying that 
which its proper medium, reflective thought, is 
incapable, strictly speaking, of expressing. Dis- 
cursive thought, as we have often said, always 
glances off from immediate feeling, and hence 
can never directly express it. The universal can 
never penetrate the particular. Although it can 
indicate particularity as a bare principle in con- 
ceptual form, yet the thing itself eludes it. The 
problem as regards the future is whether we are 
destined to attain a mode of knowledge, a con- 

M 



178 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

sciousness, in which the alogical shall be imme- 
diately presented as universal. Meanwhile, this 
is imperfectly attempted in the fine arts. 

The "higher consciousness" is concerned with 
values rather than with facts or abstract relations. 

The problem of human culture is, as 
of ?ucS° n lt ^ as a l wavs been, to disengage the 
ment in quantitative particular, the mere many- 
human ness Q f fa e world, from the essence of 
culture,, . 

its reality. This applies alike to human 

culture in its three great branches, philosophic, 
aesthetic, and ethical, notwithstanding that the 
value of each is different. Philosophy strives to 
accomplish this by reason, by the reduction of 
the world's many-ness to the unity of abstract 
thought ; art, by its reduction to the unity of 
abstract feeling. A similar aim appears in the 
practical department of human culture, namely, 
ethics. The goal here is the reduction of the 
many-ness of particular, independent contradic- 
tory human interests to the universal common 
interest of humanity. Here also, therefore, the 
problem is the disengaging of the aim of human 
conduct from the quantitative particularity of 
countless aims and its reduction to the unity of 
a common standard. In all cases, the many-ness 
of particularity is the enemy with which the intel- 
lectual progress of mankind is continually battling. 
The ordinary man is occupied almost exclusively 
with this many-ness, with the quantitative parti- 
cular, with the " sense-manifold," as it is com- 



THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 179 

monly termed. The intellectual man, on the 
other hand, is occupied with the universal, either 
of thought or of feeling. He has one of two 
aims, either to transcend the quantitative parti- 
cularity of events, things, and persons by trans- 
lating reality directly into thought-unity, or to 
effect the same purpose by transmuting it directly 
into feeling-unity. In the latter case, while the 
quantitative mode of particularity is abolished, 
the qualitative mode, the tkisness, is retained. 
In the former case, on the contrary, we have, in 
the first instance at least, to sacrifice both aspects, 
the qualitative aspect of particularity, its tkisness, 
as well as the quantitative, its endless repetition, 
by reducing reality to a system of logical abstrac- 
tions, general principles, or laws. In either case, 
the concrete reality of ordinary consciousness is 
changed. In one case, the product of the trans- 
mutation is termed truth, in the other beauty, 
employing these terms respectively, of course, 
in their widest signification. The opposition 
between particular and universal can never be 
transcended by the mere reduction of any given 
reality to logical formulae per se, to laws or uni- 
versal principles, as is done by science. The 
aesthetic abstraction, or beauty, in combining the 
qualitative particular, the tkisness of feeling, with 
the universal, which in ordinary empirical con- 
sciousness accrues to the logic-relational side of 
reality, may be said in a sense to transcend the 
antithesis of particular and universal. The typal 



180 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

form in art is a particular, but with a purely uni- 
versal content and significance. (Cf. Schopen- 
hauer, Welt als Wille, m. passim.) This typal form 
or aesthetic idea represents the attempt of the 
aesthetic consciousness to disengage reality from 
the quantitative particular, to pluck it out of the 
swamp of indefinite numerical repetition, the 
morass of infinite multiplicity, in which, on the 
plane of common-sense consciousness, reality is 
immersed. This attempt is achieved with vary- 
ing success in all the departments of art. In 
music, as Schopenhauer has pointed out, the 
transcendence of the particular is more success- 
ful than in the other departments, owing to the 
medium employed. Philosophy proper, from one 
point of view, may be regarded as an eirenikon 
between the opposed modes of reducing the 
many-ness of particularity to unity and univer- 
sality. In metaphysic, the process of reducing 
the real world to the unity of the pure forms of 
thought is carried out to the fullest extent pos- 
sible. The generalisations and distinctions of 
metaphysic are infinitely more comprehensive 
and subtler than those of physical science, or even 
of mathematics. Hence the difficulty the man 
working in the atmosphere of common-sense or 
science finds in appreciating the significance of 
the problems of philosophy, let alone in under- 
standing any attempted solution of them. But, 
notwithstanding its failure to appeal to the ordi- 
nary mind, the very completeness with which 



THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 181 

philosophy does the work of logical generalisation 
and distinction, tends to bring us back again to 
the immediacy of feeling, but in a higher potency. 
This being the case, it approaches the art con- 
sciousness in its final result. In both, the end is 
so far the same. They both represent the activity 
of the subject of consciousness in its effort to be 
rid of, or at least to reduce the significance of, the 
mode of the alogical, termed in this book quan- 
titative particularity. In the first case, it has 
sought to abolish the infinite many-ness of the 
real world by the complementary factor of that 
many-ness, to wit, logical universality. In the 
second case, it has striven to effect this by inform- 
ing the other, or qualitative, aspect of the particu- 
larity, its thisness, with a quasi-universal content. 
In art, the thisness or immediacy of mere feeling 
is sought to be made the vehicle of a universality 
that is itself based on sensation or feeling. 

The mode of envisaging the world in which 
the relational element holds the most undisputed 
possession of the field, is undoubtedly The 
the scientific attitude. In philosophy, scientific 
the inadequacy of the logical formula a * u e * 
becomes apparent, but the scientific mind proper 
has no vestige of a suspicion that the categories 
employed by physical science are not ultimate 
and final. In the infancy of knowledge, man 
blindly followed his feeling as the interpreter of 
the world-order for him. At a later age, the 
results of this interpretation, based on feeling 



182 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

and the attitude of mind to which those results 
belonged, became superstition ; the scientific atti- 
tude assumed the sway of knowledge. The truth 
of the universe in this scientific sense appeared 
very different from its truth before the rise of 
science. The highest truth for most of us means 
the reduction of the quantitative particular, of 
the many-ness of the world, to the categories of 
science. Until all departments of knowledge are 
as completely reduced to those categories as their 
nature admits, the truth of science will still await 
completion ; hence, until this is the case, the 
scientific attitude must continue to be supreme. 
But the question then further arises whether, 
after all, the scientific outlook on the world is 
ultimate, in the sense that it may not possibly be 
superseded in its turn by a different one, by one, 
that is, which, while not necessarily abrogating 
the results of the modern scientific world-outlook, 
will nevertheless present them in such a com- 
pletely new light that in their present shape 
they may appear to the man of the future hardly 
less superstitious than are the naive unreasoned 
theories of an earlier age to the man of science 
of to-day. 

The great antithesis of the ethical conscious- 
ness is that of freedom and necessity. This, as 
will be at once apparent to the reader, is only the 
special form that the cardinal antithesis between 
the alogical and the logical assumes in the sphere 
of ethics. The reason, working through the 



THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 183 

categories, proclaims that every event is neces- 
sitated, that is, that it is related indissolubly 
with previous events according to the p ree( j om 
category of cause and effect. Feel- and 
ing in its immediacy proclaims spon- neeessit y- 
taneity of motive and of action on the part of the 
individual will. In all my action, setting aside, 
of course, coercion from without, while I know 
that the action is rigorously necessitated by 
motives, in their turn strictly determined by 
preceding events, all of which are deducible from 
certain laws, physical and psychical, constituting 
special determinations of the great principle of 
causation — while I know all this, I nevertheless 
feel myself to be acting spontaneously or freely. 
In this antinomy of free will and necessity, there- 
fore, we have the alogical and the logical very 
obviously presented in crass and apparently 
irresolvable opposition in the individual con- 
sciousness. Reason, in the form of reflective 
thought, presents our actions to us as through 
and through necessitated ; immediate feeling 
presents them to us as altogether spontaneous. 
This contradiction cannot be transcended by 
thought, since it has its ground in those alogical 
elements that are prior in nature to thought. 
The activity of thought, in both its forms, 
whether as constitutive of the objective world or 
as reflected in the mind, must, by its very nature, 
reduce the particular under the universal, con- 
tingency under necessity, spontaneity under law. 



1 84 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

Viewed from the standpoint of science, therefore, 
from the standpoint, namely, that makes ab- 
straction from the alogical conditions of self- 
consciousness, necessitarianism is a plain and 
uncontrovertible conclusion. On the other 
hand, viewed from the standpoint of self-con- 
sciousness and its conditions, free-will is an 
equally irresistible truth. This antinomy can no 
more be resolved by thought than the infinity of 
space and time and their quantitative-particular 
content can be reduced to any thought-formu- 
lation. Reason holds a brief to reduce all reality 
to the category, and it always succeeds in doing 
so whilst its own point of view is retained in the 
reflective consciousness, and whilst abstraction 
is made from the other point of view in which the 
alogical predominates. For the reflective con- 
sciousness, although it always has before it the 
empirical consciousness, the object-world as given, 
from which it draws its content, can, we need 
scarcely say, always by a voluntary act throw one 
of the elements constitutive of the empirical 
consciousness into the background, and fix its 
attention on the other. The individual, there- 
fore, may either view his action as an event in 
time indissolubly connected with other events 
under the category of causation, or he may strike 
at once to the bed-rock of all things, through his 
own self-consciousness to the subject of all 
consciousness, and view the action as having 
its source in that of which time itself is the mere 



THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 185 

form. In the first case, he ascribes action to 
motive ; he deduces action determinately from 
character under a hierarchy of laws, the founda- 
tion of which is the principle that action follows 
the strongest motive. But, as Schopenhauer has 
pointed out, he ignores the fact that this character 
itself, and the relative power of the motives in- 
fluencing it, emanate from that which is not itself 
per se, but which is the presupposition, not of it 
alone, but of the whole world-process of conscious- 
ness whence it takes its origin. The spontaneity 
immediately given in the act of will or choice is, in 
short, not an individual fact, although the act itself 
may be, but proceeds directly from the primal 
subject that identifies itself in a special time-con- 
tent with a particular memory-synthesis. 

In the antinomy opened up by moral praise 
and blame we are once more confronted with a 
salient example of our cardinal anti- A ntinomv 
thesis. No person in the present day of praise 
with any pretensions to enlightenment and blame - 
doubts that human character is moulded by 
the circumstances under which the individual 
has grown up, and by those under which his 
ancestors have grown up. This character it is 
that is the source of his motives, and of the 
actions that follow therefrom. This is the theory 
of modern scientific psychology. " But," says its 
opponent, " moral judgment on actions, then, can 
have no meaning ; you cannot praise or blame a 
man for that which his character necessitated his 



1 86 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

doing ; if he is so made that he must do certain 
things, given the temptation to do them, then it 
is obviously unjust to blame him for doing them." 
The solution of this problem on the principles 
developed in the foregoing pages is, I think, clear. 
In every moral action, just as in every other 
event, there is a law-element as well as a chance- 
element. The general principle of the action can 
be deduced from the character of the individual 
performing it, in a word, can be regarded from 
the standpoint of the category of causation. In 
so far as this is the case, the individual may be 
said to be not obnoxious to praise or blame, since 
his action is determined. But this determination 
is only general. It represents the categorised 
and necessitated side of his character, and as such 
determines the general course of his action, other 
things being equal. But other things never are 
quite equal, for every action happening in the 
real world has not merely a general and logical 
side to it, but a particular and alogical side, 
irreducible to cause or to any other category. 
In a word, every event in the real world has a 
chance-side as well as a causal side, and this 
applies to moral actions no less than to other 
events. It is to the former side of the action that 
moral praise and blame, in the strict sense of the 
terms, are alone applicable. The general char- 
acter of a man may be provocative of either 
admiration or detestation, but a man cannot 
properly be praised or blamed for inheriting a 



THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 187 

certain character, or even for having acquired 
such from the circumstances attending his up- 
bringing. But the general character is only one 
element determining individual moral action. 
There is the other element in moral action as in 
every temporal event, spontaneous, aleatory, 
and altogether irreducible to the principle of 
causation. Either alone is abstract, but their 
synthesis gives us the concrete character of the 
man as displayed in his actions. In some cases, 
the causal element, the mere disposition of 
abstract character, so predominates as to com- 
pletely overshadow the other element of personal 
will in any given moral action. When this is so, 
we say that the temptation is irresistible to the 
man. This is best illustrated, perhaps, in the case 
of certain typical criminals, where the alogical 
element entering into moral action seems to be 
entirely absent. Such persons approach the con- 
dition of mechanical automata (mechanism being 
the type par excellence of action dominated by 
the causal category). The spontaneous element 
that might modify this is practically inoperative. 
But, in the general way, it by no means follows 
that because a man has certain elements of bru- 
tality in his character, or because he is of a 
strongly erotic temperament, he will ever per- 
petrate a murder or a rape. A thousand men 
may have more or less strongly developed brutal 
or erotic instincts, and yet only one of the num- 
ber either assault a man or ravish a woman. 



188 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

Hence it is that the rough test of moral 
praise or blame is the average of a given com- 
munity. As a man's action is above or below the 
average in the moral scale in his community, he 
is praised or blamed. Poverty, for example, is 
the condition predisposing to theft, but the man 
who actually steals is blamed because thousands 
of others in precisely the same circumstances as 
he is do not, and would not, commit the act of 
theft. The moral "ought" only applies to the 
particular or alogical element in the action. It is 
preponderance of this alogical-particular element 
over the logical-necessitated element in any per- 
sonality that makes us respect a man personally 
as having strength of will. The man shows his 
strength of will especially in resisting his char- 
acter, that is, the sum of the tendencies built up 
in him by heredity or by surroundings. 1 

The basis of moral judgment, that is, of praise 

or blame, is the same as the basis of sympathy, 

namely, the identification of personal 

terest and interest with extra-personal interest, of 

social- self-interest with social-interest. As to 

interest. , , . . ..... 

what the inner meaning of this iden- 
tification is, of the impulse to the realisation of 
self outside self, I have elsewhere offered a sug- 
gestion. (See pp. 126-136.) Sympathy postulates 
an identity between one personality and another. 

1 We here call attention to the inconsistency of the ordinary 
Theist, who wishes to eliminate chance from the universe, and at 
the same time to retain freedom of the will. 



THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 189 

It cries out against the notion that the self- 
consciousness associated with the animal body- 
is the last word of self-consciousness. Thus 
much we may affirm, whether the hypothesis 
referred to above be accepted or not. 

The pallogistic theory of conduct, from Socrates 
downwards, has harped upon the antithesis be- 
tween action dominated by reason and 
action dictated by impulse or passion. ^p^ e and 
The ideal man, on this theory, is a 
man whose every action is through and through 
penetrated by reason. The Stoics were the great 
historical representatives of this view in the 
classical world. In post-mediaeval philosophy, 
Spinoza was the thinker who stated the principle 
most emphatically, and elaborated it most fully. 
{Cf. " Ethica," Book V.) If by action in accord- 
ance with reason be simply meant action accom- 
panied by a clear view of the end of the action, 
and by a well-grounded knowledge of the effect 
of the immediate ends to be attained in relation 
to the ultimate end, then, obviously, so far, no 
fault is to be found with the doctrine. The fact 
remains, however, and has too often been for- 
gotten by votaries of the foregoing or Stoic 
doctrine (as we may term it from its most pro- 
minent representatives in history), that what lies 
behind all rationality in human action is feeling. 
It is the felt desire or want that dictates the 
process of all action to the consciousness. 
Rationality, the mere knowledge of the rela- 



190 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

tion between means and end-in-view, is always 
subordinate to feeling. The end, the telos, of all 
activity is immediately determined by feeling, and 
by feeling alone. The determination is alogical, 
not logical. Though, in the present stage of the 
development of consciousness, we may not be 
able to formulate this telos in its completeness, we 
are nevertheless immediately conscious, beyond 
all dispute, that happiness or pleasurable feeling, 
using these words in their widest sense, is at 
least an essential attribute of this telos. But you 
cannot reason a man into happiness. Pleasure 
or happiness, as an experience, is in the last 
resort unreasoning and immediate, although it 
may very well be covered up or embroidered 
with reason. 

Intellectual considerations may play an impor- 
tant part in determining the specific form that 
the desire for, or the belief in, happiness takes, 
but this will not alter the fact that happiness 
belongs essentially to the telos of human action, 
and that happiness rests au fond upon pleasur- 
able feeling. You cannot reason a man out of 
the fact that he experiences pleasure or pain. 
As a boy, I once heard a quack doctor at a 
country fair arguing to the guileless swains 
around his stand that they might, without any 
hesitation, allow him to draw their teeth, since 
the pain they feared in the operation could not 
be really there at all. " It is unreasonable," said 
he, "to think that there can be any pain, for 



THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 191 

teeth are of the nature of bone," and taking up 
a skull and striking it, " there is no feeling in 
bone." All that reason can really do is to im- 
press upon the consciousness the fact that the 
consequences of certain pleasures are more pain- 
ful than the pleasures are pleasurable. In this 
way a man may be reasoned into abstaining 
from the pleasures in question, but this does not 
alter the fact that his feeling in the matter is 
the ultimate arbiter. To take an important 
example. I cannot demonstrate to a man by any 
process of reasoning that he ought to prefer the 
common welfare of humanity to the pleasure of 
himself as an individual, or to the material benefit 
of the class to which he belongs. Here, again, 
his feeling is the ultimate arbiter of his action. 
If he says, "What is mankind to me? I am 
going to enjoy myself," there is nothing for us 
but to pass on to the next question. Thus the 
"ought" of conscience is always per se alogical, 
never logical — always per se feeling, never 
reason. Reason is always the means to the 
end, and never the end itself. In motive, feeling 
is always the ultimate fact, and reason is purely 
derivative. If, then, feeling remains alike the 
starting-point and goal of all human conduct, it 
follows that the theory that postulates reason 
as the dominating factor in human motive and 
action is illusory. 

Even the crucial distinction between higher 
and lower in the pleasurableness of feeling is not 



i 9 2 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

rational. One always comes back ultimately upon 

the bed-rock of a fact, the essential of which is 

immediate feeling. Reason, in its rela- 
The . 

rational- tion to conduct and elsewhere, always 

isationof presupposes feeling, the logical the 
alogical, and not conversely. The 
mere feeling-impulse, the mere blind want or de- 
sire, is always becoming informed with thought, 
or rationalised. But, in the resultant synthesis, 
although the form of the feeling may be changed, 
even to becoming completely transformed, it 
remains feeling nevertheless, and becomes in 
its turn the raw material for further rationality. 
We start with a vague impulse, a desire, a 
want, as yet undetermined by thought. It 
discloses differences within itself. These differ- 
ences become emphasised by thought as mutually 
implicatory and antithetical, until at last the 
inter-relating activity itself often assumes a more 
prominent position in consciousness than do the 
terms inter-related. The proximate end, dictated 
primarily by the reason as means to an end 
not proximate, becomes mistaken for a true end, 
and the original end thus disappears from view. 
But, in the last resort, the telos is found in the 
completed feeling or realised impulse. 

Let us take the case of any purpose to be 
effected. This purpose has its origin in a feel- 
ing of want or desire, from which springs the 
primary alogical impulse. The primary feeling 
differentiates itself into terms, which become 



THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 193 

related and modified by thought-activity. Next 
arises the question of means. In the reflection on 
means, the craving for the ultimate end 
becomes obscured by the desire for the an a 
means which, now wholly or partly, fills proximate 
the place of the original feeling of desire 
for the ultimate end. Thought itself in the shape 
of further reflection then definitely formulates 
the question of the cui bono, and the original 
desire - feeling reasserts itself, but this time 
associated with a determinate knowledge of all 
its implications. This is the dialectic of human 
practice. Whatever aim, be it low or high, a 
man sets before himself in life, for example, 
it is feeling and not reason that dictates that 
aim. Whether it be the delights of having "a 
good time," or the aesthetic pleasure derived 
from the fulfilment of an artistic purpose, whether 
it be the satisfaction of scientific curiosity or 
the enjoyment of acquiring the point of view of 
an adequate philosophic insight into the inner- 
most depths of "the world and the soul," 
whether his aim be bread and butter or specu- 
lative contemplation, it is alike feeling and not 
reason that dictates his life-purpose. 

Oftentimes the reason, the reflective faculty 
of the individual, does not reach the final stage 
of recognising and bringing to clear conscious- 
ness the telos prescribed by the desire-feeling or 
impulse. It stops at the second stage, in which 
the ultimate end is negated in proximate ends. 

N 



i 9 4 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

It fails to reach the stage at which they are in 

their turn negated, and in which the alike primary 

and final end emerges into full con- 
Vagaries . T • 1 1 1 

of reason sciousness. It aimlessly pursues the 

and means that have become for the nonce 

impulse. , , , , . , 

ends, perhaps in a purely mechanical 

manner, like the man who, having made his 
fortune and sold his business, finding his occupa- 
tion gone, begs from his successor to be allowed 
to sit in the old counting-house for a few hours 
every day. The mere feeling of discomfort at 
the breach in the mechanical round of what was 
originally means to an end forces him to do 
this. But the fact of his feeling it thus shows 
that he had never brought to a clear conscious- 
ness the ultimate end of which his business 
activity was the means. 

In the view of those who hold reason to be 
the final principle of the mind, it is opposed 
to impulse as the dominant to the subordinate. 
The "wise man" has always been supposed to 
act in accordance with the dictates of reason, 
and not with those of unreflective impulse. But 
this really means nothing more than that the 
said " wise man " does not follow immediate 
feeling. It does not mean that feeling is not 
the ultimate arbiter of his action, but that the 
feeling that guides him forms the final term in 
a dialectical process — in short, that it is not raw 
or crude feeling, but feeling that has already 
passed through the mill of thought. 



THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 195 

We said a while ago that pleasurable feeling 
or happiness was an essential element in the 
telos of all activity. And yet how Tne 
often do we find that the man who pursuit of 
consciously and deliberately formulates na PP mess - 
pleasure as his goal does not arrive at it. This 
is because he places before him merely the 
abstract category and no concrete end. The 
category of happiness as abstract is unreal. It 
can only become realised as entering into a 
synthesis, of which the primary elements are 
other than itself. The man who attains happi- 
ness does so by postulating as his end some 
concrete goal irrespective of the happiness or 
pleasure which, from this point of view, appears 
as an adjunct, or something incidental to it. 
But with this question we shall have occasion 
to deal more fully in the next chapter when 
discussing the stimmum bonum, the final telos, 
of human life. 

The term "will" is used in more senses than 
one, both by Schopenhauer and in popular 
discourse. It is used as synonymous The 
sometimes with desire, sometimes with canon of 
effort, sometimes with the velleitas Etnies * 
of the Schoolmen, the mere inwardness of spon- 
taneity, but the will with which the ethical 
consciousness is concerned implies the actual 
consciousness of an individual. The spontaneity 
must be, so to say, conscious of itself to con- 
stitute will in the ethical sense. For the rest, 



196 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

will may be defined in general as the tendency 
of self-consciousness to realise itself completely. 
The whole system of things is implied in this 
self-realisation, in the last resort. Kant and 
Schopenhauer were the first to indicate clearly 
the true nature of the antinomy of freedom and 
necessity. But Kant, here as elsewhere, failed 
to distinguish adequately between the self-con- 
sciousness of the individual and the ultimate 
ground of all consciousness. This led him to 
his famous theory of the doubleness of the 
individual will — that while as phenomenon it 
was necessitated, as noumenon it was free. In 
this distinction Kant doubtless had in his mind 
the distinction here formulated, between the will 
in its alogical immediacy, and the will viewed 
by reflection as subordinate to the category of 
cause and effect. 

Will as entering into the ethical conscious- 
ness implies the per se alogical element of 
spontaneity as determined by the logical element 
of deliberation. It further implies the actual 
consciousness of this spontaneous impulse or 
velleity as being so determined, A mechanical 
compulsion, whether it be physical or psychical, 
is extra-moral ; the element of spontaneity is 
wanting. Similarly, blind unconscious impulse 
is extra-moral ; the element of actuality, of self- 
conscious tkisness, is wanting. In either case, 
the deliberative or rational element fails. But 
this thought-element is essential to bring any 



THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 197 

action within the realm of the moral conscious- 
ness as such. Hence, though that which primarily 
gives direction to the will may be alogical, the 
ultimate end is a logical determination of our 
consciousness. The liking or disliking, the 
choosing or not choosing, of a purpose may be 
irreducible to anything but the immediacy of 
blind feeling. Yet every end that subserves 
this end, every means to the final end, is logic- 
ally determined. All subordinate ends which 
are related to the ultimate end as means, and 
which are the products of deliberation, are more 
or less fully determined by thought-activity in 
its various forms. Thus whilst thought cannot 
fix any ultimate canon of conduct, yet as soon 
as the alogical will-content is given, a science 
of ethics, embodying the most precise formulae, 
may be built up on a logical foundation. 
* Just as the ultimate canon of ethics is alogical, 
and therefore not formulatable in thought, so 
it is with the ultimate basis of the -r^e canon 
aesthetic consciousness. The judg- ofsesthe- 
ment which in the last resort pro- ties * 
claims this thing beautiful and that thing ugly 
is arbitrary, as based upon an alogical postulate 
that cannot itself be reduced to reason, that is, 
be resolved into terms connected by thought- 
relations. But as in ethics, so here, once given 
this alogical point d'apftui, we can build up, on 
the foundation thus acquired, most undoubtedly 
a logical system of formulae that will furnish us 



i 9 8 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

with a canon of taste in art. Any such canon 
of taste, just as any canon of ethics, presupposes 
the acceptance of a given alogical principle as 
postulate. A thing is beautiful to me or ugly 
to me, but in the last resort I can no more 
convince a man by a process of ratiocination 
that my view is right and worthy of all accepta- 
tion than I can convince the other man, before 
spoken of, that the good of humanity ought to 
take precedence of his personal pleasure or 
aggrandisement. In both cases, however, once 
we have a common basis, I can as a rule readily 
prove that one particular object is more beauti- 
ful than another, and why it is so, or that one 
particular action is more right than another, and 
why it is so. The alogical standard once ac- 
cepted, all else is plain sailing. 

Even in philosophy, the sphere of the logical 
par excellence, the ultimate postulate is alogical. 

It is on the acceptance of this as a 
The eanon . . . . , \ . 

of philo- basis that the whole superstructure of 

sophie philosophic formulation rests. Hence 

truth. 

the study of metaphysic always has 

as its pre-condition a mind capable of recognis- 
ing the ultimate in consciousness as such. With- 
out this capacity, to embark upon philosophical 
investigation is more futile than ploughing the 
sands. History and current writing afford us 
plenty of instances of able and even logically 
acute minds that stumble about hopelessly in 
the vain attempt to deal with speculative prob- 



THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 199 

lems, for the simple reason that they fail to 
find the necessary point d'appui in the ultimate 
principles of consciousness. They beat about 
the bush, and show much subtlety, and may 
even now and then have insight, but, philoso- 
phically speaking, their whole train of thought 
is vitiated and worthless. On the other hand, 
when once we recognise the ultimate principle 
that all reality, as opposed to certain depart- 
ments abstracted therefrom, presupposes, we can 
formulate on this basis the self-consistency of 
consciousness as the general canon of philo- 
sophic truth. Having done this, we deduce 
therefrom the variety of subordinate canons that 
go to make up the philosophic synthesis viewed 
as a sytematic whole. All three departments, 
ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, rest ultimately on 
that unique alogical apprehension which is itself 
incommunicable just because its immediately 
given content cannot be formulated in thought, 
cannot be categorised. In all argumentation a 
correspondence between my own and other 
minds in this respect is assumed. I cannot 
even prove to a man that pain is an evil if 
he choose to deny it. The uniqueness and im- 
mediacy of the value-feeling that forms the 
material of the ethical, aesthetic and philosophi- 
cal consciousness is not, as with the knowledge- 
feeling that constitutes the raw material of the 
external world, differentiated and mediatised 
under the form of space. Nor is it directly 



aoo THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

categorised in any act of perception itself, such 
as that by which an external world of objects 
is given as " common to all." Here also the 
actual feeling (sensation), hardness, colour, sound, 
&c, is equally immediate, and therefore incom- 
municable. It is the space-form and the thought- 
element alone that give it its objective validity, 
and hence make it "common to all" within the 
sphere of the ordinary "common-sense" con- 
sciousness. In the ethical, aesthetic, or philoso- 
phic, consciousness, on the other hand, we have 
to do with a thisness of feeling that acquires an 
objective validity indirectly, i.e. in reflection alone. 
Hence, unlike the judgments of common-sense 
or of science (which have at least their point 
d'appui in the world of common-sense), ethical, 
aesthetic, and philosophical, value-judgments, 
primarily have the appearance of being the 
special product of the individual mind. They 
acquire by sufferance, as it were, a quasi- 
objective value, which, however, can be at any 
moment, at least in appearance, upset by the 
dictum of any individual. The " ought " in 
which the objective validity is grounded, re- 
mains in the case of these higher departments 
of consciousness formally psychological or sub- 
jective. There is no logical standard by which 
formally to compel assent to these values as in 
the case of the facts of common-sense reality. 
There is nothing in the last resort by which I 
can compel a man's assent to the proposition 



THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 201 

that he ought to perform this duty, that he ought 
to admire this work of art, that he ought to 
accept this philosophical postulate. If I attempt 
to do so, he will always have his answer ready, 
based on the uniqueness, the particularity, the 
thisness of the feeling out of which my proposi- 
tion arises. Of course this may be mere pre- 
tence on his part, but it is unanswerable as far 
as" it goes. It is unanswerable so long as one 
remains at the standpoint of common-sense con- 
sciousness. The only answer is to show that 
the ethical or aesthetic consciousness involves the 
postulate in dispute in order to be consistent 
within itself. But this, to be effective, supposes 
that the interlocutor is capable of raising himself 
to the point of view of the ethical or aesthetic 
consciousness, or, to use a common phrase, that 
he has a moral or artistic " sense." The case 
is similar even with the metaphysical conscious- 
ness, although it may at first sight appear to 
be different. 

It is, of course, quite true that metaphysics has 
for its test the self-consistency of consciousness 
as a whole, starting from the ordinary empirical 
consciousness. But here also the man must be 
able to place himself at the point of view of 
the philosophic consciousness, ridding himself of 
the abstractions of common-sense perception and 
ordinary thought, before he can appreciate the 
conditions that all consciousness presupposes, and 
recognise the meaning and value of reality as it 



202 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

confronts him in the interpretation of philosophic 
thought. The philosophic consciousness, while it 
embraces the common-sense consciousness, does 
not stop there. The reality of common-sense 
appears metamorphosed therein. But in this 
process ;f transforming reality, philosophic reflec- 
tion brings into view ultimate elements, which, 
although implicit, never become explicit within the 
sphere of any consciousness dominated by com- 
mon-sense. Hence to determine ethical, aesthetic, 
or metaphysical values, the categories specially 
referable to the common-sense consciousness are 
either not at all, or at best only partially, available. 
In passing from this our ordinary conscious- 
ness, with its common-sense values, and, in 
the narrow meaning, scientific values, to the 
world of moral practice, aesthetic contempla- 
tion, or philosophical analysis and construction, 
with their partially or wholly differing values, 
we take leave of objectivity in the strict 
sense of the word, including that form of reflec- 
tion which is directly based on objectivity. We 
enter a new region which knows neither the 
objective nor the subjective (as antithetical to 
objective), but which nevertheless claims an 
extra-individual validity notwithstanding that its 
material is the un mediatised tkisness of particular 
feeling. I can demonstrate to any one the neces- 
sity of existence of a fact or a law of Nature by 
bringing him to book with the ultimate categories 
of the physical world, behind which categories 



The higher consciousness 203 

he cannot go. But I cannot demonstrate to him 
on the same ground that he ought to prefer 
intellectual to animal pleasures, that he ought to 
place the welfare of mankind above his individual 
welfare, that good art is to be valued above bad, 
or even that all reality is analysable into con- 
scious elements, unless he is already within the 
compass of these several departments of the 
higher consciousness, and hence stands on a 
foundation that renders the formation of judg- 
ments respecting them possible for him. The 
foregoing distinction is what Kant was obviously 
endeavouring to formulate as problem and to re- 
solve in his own way, in the Kritik der Practise ken 
Vernunft, the Kritik der Urtkeilskraft, and his 
other ethical and aesthetic writings. I can assume 
the recognition within certain very narrow limits 
of the same external world as existent with corre- 
sponding determinations by every man, but I 
cannot postulate in the same way the recognition 
by another man of the same ethical criterion or 
the same aesthetic standard as obtains for me. 
Nevertheless, that there is a "community," a 
common psychological ground, in these idealistic 
departments of consciousness, is certain ; other- 
wise the very notion of forming judgments 
respecting them would be absurd. For these 
judgments necessarily imply an ultimate postu- 
late on which their validity depends. Kant, in 
the third of his " Kritiks," speaks somewhat 
vaguely of a sensus communis at the basis of 



204 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

aesthetic judgments. The solution of the point 
as to the extra-individual validity of this " some- 
what" — which is grounded ultimately in the im- 
mediacy of particular feeling — on the lines of the 
present essay, would seem to lie in the recogni- 
tion of the fact that it is grounded in the meta- 
physical elements of consciousness-in-general. 
As above insisted upon, we have to do here 
with an alogical factor, will, feeling, sensation, 
per se, which, though at the root of all conscious- 
ness, and, a fortiori, of all content of consciousness, 
does not enter empirical or common-sense con- 
sciousness, like the feelings or sensations of the 
objective world, which are already worked up 
by thought-forms, and thus acquire universality 
and objectivity. But we become aware of it, 
so to say, as unmediatised alogicality, and hence 
(regarded from the psychological antithesis of 
subjective and objective) as subjective. 

Here again we see that the ordinary empirical 
consciousness remains our norm of knowledge. 
What is below this plane is element merely, 
and hence unreal. What is above it is either 
science, in. which the alogical in the empirical 
reality of common-sense sinks into being the 
mere adjunct of the logical category, or aspira- 
tion and feeling, in a word sentiment, ethical or 
aesthetic, where the thought-element is subordi- 
nated to nisus and sensation. Schopenhauer was 
not so far wrong after all when he deduced art 
immediately from his ultimate alogical principle, 



THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 205 

namely, his metaphysical Will. In the content 
neither of scientific thought nor of aesthetic con- 
templation can we find that perfect blend of the 
two ultimate elements of consciousness which we 
find in empirical reality. One side or the other 
preponderates. The aim of scientific thought is 
to obtain logical universality at the expense of 
the alogical — of feeling and will. The aim of 
art is to obtain universality of feeling — the 
particular element in empirical reality — at the 
expense of the categories of the empirical 
world, and more or less of thought altogether. 
Philosophy, while on the one side its aim is to 
out-science science in the universality of the 
categories into which it transforms the empiri- 
cally real world, is led through the very thorough- 
going character of its operations in this respect 
to a recognition of the truth that the alpha and 
omega of thought-forms are after all feeling and 
will-striving — that out of these alogicals the 
logical with its categories emerges to make 
reality possible, and that into them it must 
return if reality is to be complete. 



VII 

THE FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 

An attempt, known as Pragmatism, has lately 

been made in English philosophy to resolve 

reality into a system of "practical 

Sehopen- postulates," of means towards certain 

hauerian- ends. Concrete consciousness is thus, 

ism. The . , . , 

world as with a vengeance, made the mere 

practical adjunct of will, j We may readily 
postulate. i . i mi r \ 

admit that will, as one aspect of the 

alogical principle in consciousness, is discoverable 
as element in every conscious reality ; and hence 
that, from the " practical postulate " point of 
view, consciousness as a whole and, a fortiori, 
every apperceptive synthesis within this whole, 
may be regarded, in one sense, as contributing to 
willed ends. But this Neo-Schopenhauerianism, 
as we understand it, like its predecessor, really 
goes much farther. It would treat one of its 
elements, will or purposiveness, as the sole prin- 
ciple of consciousness-in-general. The fallacy of 
this way of solving the metaphysical problem 
is, to my mind, sufficiently evident when we 
consider that all willing, all purpose, even the 
blindest Trieb, presupposes a given reality alike as 

206 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 207 

its terminus a quo and as its terminus ad quern. 
It presupposes it, and hence does not create it. 
We can no more attach a meaning to will or 
purpose apart from the total conscious synthesis, 
than we can attach a meaning to pure knowledge 
apart from the total conscious synthesis. The 
latter, as we have, often enough, had occasion to 
point out, is the fallacy of the Pallogist. But the 
former, that of the Thelemist, as we may term 
him (sometimes also described as Voluntarist), is 
none the less flagrant, and is, if anything, less 
plausible. There can be no doubt that into every 
conscious synthesis the element of will enters ; it 
has a purposive side. Yet there is just as little 
doubt that this side does not embrace the whole 
synthesis. Reality, existence, we may regard, if 
we like, as subserving a system of ends, but it is 
not itself mere end or mere means to end ; for if 
so, it would be nothing but an abstraction. The 
world refuses to be whittled away into mere 
purpose on the one side, just as it refuses to be 
whittled away into mere " bloodless categories " 
on the other. 

Can we formulate, in terms of reflective thought, 
the goal of the world viewed as a system of deter- 
minations of consciousness possible 
and actual? In other words, can we of f if g os 
formulate reality from the purposive 
side, as such ? If we can, what are the most 
comprehensive terms in which we can express, 
or at least indicate, this ultimate purposive goal ? 



208 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

If not, can we attain this goal itself, or at least 
can it come within the finite and temporal condi- 
tions of empirical consciousness in a flash of 
feeling, i.e. in a mode of consciousness in which 
the feeling element predominates ? The first of 
these questions, if answered in the affirmative, 
leads us directly to philosophy — the reasoned 
analysis of purpose, means and ends — and, no 
less directly to the search for an answer to our 
second question. A negative answer to our first 
question opens up two avenues to us, either that 
leading to some form of Mysticism, or that leading 
to Scepticism or Agnosticism. Such an Agnosti- 
cism frankly renounces any claim to solve a pro- 
blem which appeals to us as the most vital of all 
those revealed by metaphysic. The question here, 
of course, is not of anything less than an ultimate 
telos or goal. That there are ends to work for — 
ends, it may be, distant or deep-lying — would be 
denied by few outside the order of professional 
cynics ; but the problem of an ultimate telos may 
well be treated by the most serious thinker as in- 
soluble. For this question of the ultimate telos 
of life involves not merely that of human action 
or endeavour, but the time-honoured problem of 
the final world-purpose. It thus opens up, from 
a new point of view, the question of Theism in its 
various forms, inasmuch as certain formulations 
of the ultimate world-telos are supposed to in- 
volve the theistic assumption. 1 Starting, as we 

1 See Chapter IX. 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 209 

necessarily do, from the human point of view, we 
have to ascertain what is implied therein. We 
have to ascertain how far purpose can be con- 
ceived as other than the purpose of a conscious- 
ness concrete, and therefore involving a thisness 
(qualitative particularity) — in other words, an 
individzcal consciousness. Further, we must ask 
whether such a purpose or willed end can only 
possess meaning in so far as its realisation is 
recognised as possibly coming within the range 
of the individual mind itself. 

We have here to note once more that, in the 
general problem of reality, the moment we arrive 
at a stasis, namely, at a mode of the conscious 
synthesis that has no becoming within it, which is 
pure actuality, we cease to have reality, in the 
true sense of the word, before us at all, but are 
reduced to what is, truly viewed, an abstraction. 
(Compare the discussion on Pallogism, supra, pp. 
43-51.) As in the general problem of knowledge, 
so in the special problem of teleological values, the 
moment we have arrived at an exhausted willing 
— the moment purpose is lost in the full fruition 
of all ends willed — we similarly take leave of 
teleological reality, and we are confronted with 
an empty abstraction. In the world of purpose, 
no less than in the world of knowledge, when we 
have come to the end of all potentiality — when 
we have no reserve fund left of unrealised pos- 
sibility in the one case of sensation, in the other 
of ends — we have nought but the ghost of reality 

o 



210 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

there, a lifeless wraith. In this way, an absolutely 
perfect happiness, in which no streak of desire, 
of yearning for that which is not, remained, a 
happiness that afforded no vista of anything 
beyond itself, would cease to be by that very fact 
happiness. This truth is illustrated in the world 
of common life by the phenomenon of ennui 
which dogs the steps of the pleasure-seeker. The 
man who can only appreciate sensual pleasure, 
after he has rung the changes upon all forms 
of sensual experience, becomes jaded, and the 
pleasure attendant thereon gradually vanishes. 
It must not be supposed that this is merely due 
to the fact that his delights are sensual, for 
mutatis mutandis all happiness, if it could become 
perfect, if it could exhaust all its possibilities in 
actual attainment, would sooner or later cease 
to be present as happiness. It would fall flat, 
monotonous, and prove finally insufferable. The 
reason why this specially strikes us in sensual 
enjoyment, is simply owing to the limitation of 
the latter as to range. Its latent possibilities are 
sooner exhausted than those of higher and more 
comprehensive forms of "blessedness." Hence 
the summum bonum, if it is to be living and real, 
must always be regarded as involving a happiness 
that is not merely everlasting, but likewise ever- 
increasing {i.e. of course, in so far as we envisage 
it as content of time, as having a duration). 

But does a conceivable absolute goal or end- 
purpose necessarily consist in happiness, or even 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 211 

involve happiness ? That an ultimate end must 
carry within it the highest realisable bliss is, I 
take it, a postulate necessarily implied Happiness 
in the self-consistency of the willing itself, 
consciousness, and indirectly of all con- nee ef sar>y 
sciousness. For, if we examine the element, 
matter closely, we shall see that any ^Jemen^M. 
object of desire implies the assumption the ulti- 
that pleasure or happiness is at least mat egoal. 
bound up with it. We cannot conceive it as a 
goal at all for consciousness unless happiness in 
some form is to play an essential part therein. 
No matter under whatever other general concept 
we may choose to formulate it, such as harmony, 
completeness, perfection, self-realisation, " free- 
dom," or the Platonic ayaOov, all these notions 
remain little more than phrases when taken per 
se and without further definition. But whatever 
their content may be, one thing, I take it, is 
certain, that they cannot be thought as ends of 
supreme desire without the notion of happiness 
or self-satisfaction being also thought into them 
as an essential factor. 

Yet while this is undoubtedly true, it is no less 
true that, though happiness may be an essential 
factor in the telos of reality, it can never in itself, 
that is, in its naked abstraction, be that telos. 
Common observation shows us that the man who 
deliberately and directly places pleasure before 
himself as his sole end, does not obtain it — not even 
the sort of pleasure of which he is in search — but 



212 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

gets ennui instead. I f happiness, by itself, were the 
substantial telos, the distinction between " higher " 
and " lower " in happiness, i.e. in self-satisfaction, 
would remain unaccounted for. The hog happy, 
in that case, must be preferable to Socrates 
miserable. There could be no qualitative dis- 
tinction recognisable. Satisfaction, whatever form 
it took, would be equally end. The recognition 
of the distinction between " higher " and " lower " 
in aim rests upon the assumption of an absolute 
end, an absolute desirability, which is more than 
mere particularity of feeling — more than any mere 
" subjective sense of pleasure " (as the psycho- 
logists would term it). It involves the assump- 
tion of something extra-individual, something that 
is not merely particular. The stimmum bonum 
must have an absolute character of desirability, 
just as in their own spheres righteousness, 
beauty, or truth must have it. This character 
of absoluteness it is that gives the thing its 
" categorical imperative," so to speak. We 
postulate the summum bonum as something that 
all conscious beings must recognise under normal 
conditions as such, as the supremely desirable, 
when once disclosed to them. Just as we assume 
that a man must admire a great work of art, 
given sufficient education for him to understand 
it, or an act of moral heroism, if his conscious- 
ness be normal ; or again, just as with a still 
higher degree of certainty we assume that the 
normal man, " in full possession of his faculties," 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 213 

perceives the same external world as we perceive, 
substantially in the same manner, so here we 
assume an ultimate desirability, objective in its 
own way, as being valid for all, apart from any 
given particularity that enters into it. 

If, then, the supreme telos of life cannot be 
regarded as consisting merely in happiness — even 
perfect happiness — and, on the other hand, if we 
cannot think of any telos except as involving, 
as an essential factor, that supreme satisfaction 
understood by perfect happiness, what specific 
place does this factor occupy in the analysis of 
the summum bonum regarded as living reality ? 
Apart from its content, happiness is an abstrac- 
tion merely, lacking the conditions of a real 
synthesis. This we see illustrated on the plane 
of everyday experience in the familiar fact 
that in the pursuance of mere "pleasure" we 
are hunting a will-o'-the-wisp, which vanishes 
when we think we have got it. It is only as 
entering into a synthesis as an element merely, 
however necessary — that is, into a unity com- 
prising other elements than itself — that it be- 
comes invested with a definite meaning. It 
thus acquires a character other than it possesses 
per se, or in its bare abstractness, the distinction 
of "higher" and "lower" emerging into view. 
Per se, happiness is merely subjective and par- 
ticular ; per aliud, it is objective and universal. 
As member of a synthesis, by reason of this 
distinction within itself of " higher " and " lower," 



2i 4 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

it acts as a criterion, so to say, of ends ; since, 
although not itself an end, it must enter into all 
ends — proximate no less than ultimate (in so 
far, of course, as we regard such purposes as 
ends in themselves, and not as mere means to 
other ends). 

As regards the summum bonum, it is difficult 
at least to say whether the happiness or some 
other element in its content is the more im- 
portant in view of the complete synthesis. We 
can hardly predicate priority of one over another, 
since they are reciprocally involved in each other. 
The other elements, apart from that of happi- 
ness, would not constitute the summum bonum, 
even though they might be concrete from a 
different point of view, while happiness per se, 
separated from the content, would, as above 
said, be a barren abstraction. We may point 
out once more that this is illustrated, on the 
plane of common life, by the fact that the 
man who attains pleasure, whatever form it 
takes, and however relative it may be, does 
so only in the pursuance of a definite end, 
which is not pleasure in itself, but something 
which appears in his purposive consciousness 
as desirable even apart from any pleasure in- 
volved in it. The pleasure indeed seems to 
enter as a mere accessory into the result in 
all purposive contents involving the highest 
pleasures. 

The telos or summum bonum, as it has been 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 215 

shaped in the ideals of the various religious 
systems of the world that have sprung up 
during the period of historic civilisa- Historical 
tion, is represented notably by the ideals of 
Nirvana of the Buddhist, the ka-raah M y stieism - 
of the Neo-Platonist, the Beatific Vision of 
the Catholic, and the union with God of other 
Christian sects. The ideal of pre-civilised man 
is utterly different from any of these. His 
telos is the continuance and ever - increasing 
glory of the social collectivity to which he 
belongs — clan, tribe, or people — united, as he 
conceives it, by a kinship-bond near or remote. 
Hence came ancestor-worship, &c. For the in- 
trospective religions, on the contrary, which 
form so large a part of the moral and intellec- 
tual history of civilised man, the individual per- 
sonality, per se, is the main or sole factor. Its 
complement is either the divine spirit of the 
universe, also conceived of as a personality in 
some sense, or the spiritual side of the universe 
considered as a self-subsistent whole. The 
interest of these religions centres in the relation 
of the finite personality to its infinite source. In 
saying this, I do not mean to imply that there is 
no social element in such introspective religions. 
Without a social element they could not have 
maintained the hold they have had throughout 
varying phases of civilisation. But this social 
side, prominent though it may have been often- 
times in practical life, has been, from the point of 



216 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

view of the doctrine, always subordinated to the 
aforesaid spiritual individualism. Almsgiving, 
brotherly love, duties to one's fellow-men gene- 
rally — all these things, viewed from the point of 
view of theological doctrine, were merely means 
to another end, to wit, the great central goal of 
personal self-realisation in the Divine Being. 

There is a further point about the ideals of 
these introspective faiths that deserves notice. 
In most of them personal consciousness, the indi- 
vidual soul, is thought of as the ultimate form of 
the world-principle (Theism). Hence the im- 
pulse towards the attainment of a world-purpose 
is supposed to come from within, and the whole 
process of its attainment to centre in the indi- 
vidual soul. The same also applies even to 
those mystical systems, notably Buddhism and 
Brahmanism, where personality is not regarded 
as ultimate. For such faiths, one and all, have 
this in common, that they conceive of the telos of 
life as attainable through a direct reciprocal con- 
nection between the individual soul and the ulti- 
mate world-principle. The operation is supposed 
to take place in the self-conscious individual, and 
the means by which it is effected is usually some 
form of asceticism — the withdrawal of the indi- 
vidual within himself, his separation from sensuous 
pleasures, and often his severance from Nature 
and from society itself. This point of the direct- 
ness of the communion of the individual soul with 
the ultimate universal reality is important, or even 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 217 

crucial. There is yet another point to be noted 
about this mode of viewing the telos. The attain- 
ment of the telos is invariably regarded as imme- 
diate, or in some way irrespective of time ; it is 
given in one " eternal glance " in an " eternal now." 
Thus, hitherto, throughout the individualist- 
introspective phase of religious development, the 

idea of all faiths included in this phase „ 

■ New eon- 

has been to strike out a short cut by eeption 

which the telos of life, the goal of of world- 
reality, can be attained by the indi- 
vidual soul. But the conviction is becoming ever 
stronger in the modern world, that the attempt 
to realise this ultimate ideal by any act of will 
on the part of the individual must necessarily be 
futile. The distrust, the waning faith, in any 
short cut to the " final goal of all " springing from 
individual initiative, is ever on the increase, and 
this want of faith is signally displayed in the 
change that has gone over the introspective reli- 
gions themselves, as shown by the attitude of 
their exponents. The significance of the indi- 
vidual in this connection has paled, and the con- 
viction is becoming prevalent, implicitly where 
not explicitly, that this " final goal of all " — if 
such be assumed as attainable — cannot be reached 
by any short cut based upon personal will and a 
direct connection of the personal consciousness 
of the human individual with the world-principle, 
but that it implies a long and weary course of 
social development, in which individual initiative 



218 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

can play only an indirect and, for the most part, a 
purely subordinate role. Concurrently with this 
change of attitude as regards the significance of 
the individual for the world-purpose, we may 
notice also another, namely, a growing disbelief 
in the possibility of comprehending this world- 
purpose itself within the four corners of any 
definite formula. Both these tendencies alike 
seem to the present writer to be signs of pro- 
gress. The ultimate barrenness of the mere 
introspective attitude, with its doctrine of the all- 
sufficiency of individual initiative, conjoined with 
the direct rapport between the individual soul 
and the world-principle (whether personified or 
not), is written on the history and present fortunes 
of this order of thought. The traditional religious 
systems embodying it are, one and all, tending 
to become crystallised, and to lapse consciously 
or unconsciously into mere politico -economical 
agencies for the maintenance of the status quo, 
while with some of those who attempt to galvanise 
them, the old standpoint is explained away in accor- 
dance with the newer attitude of thought in these 
matters. Thus the social side of Christianity gene- 
rally, especially in the alleged teachings of Jesus, 
is deliberately exaggerated, and introspective pre- 
cepts presented with a strong social colouring. 

The hall-mark of those religious systems that 
seek to bring the telos within the reach of 
the individual soul, is their insistence upon 
one factor in the moral consciousness of the 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 219 

individual, which they sever from its connection 
as part of the synthesis, and hypostatise. The 
factor referred to is — self-sacrifice. They are apt 
to exalt self-sacrifice and constitute it the end-in- 
itself of moral action, in this way often becoming 
involved in a vicious circle, which easily leads to 
a complete perversion of the moral judgment. 
Approval may thus be given to actions that are 
viewed concretely {i.e. from the normal stand- 
point of moral consciousness as a whole), to the 
last degree immoral. For example, the case has 
been known of a pigeon-trainer who, becoming 
a "converted" character and a member of the 
Salvation Army, was desirous of showing the 
bona fides of his conversion by a deed of self- 
sacrifice. The conduct involving for him the 
greatest self-sacrifice he could think of was to 
wring the necks of his favourite birds, which 
he did accordingly. This dastardly act, his 
moral sense perverted by the introspective 
morality with its apotheosis of self-sacrifice, re- 
garded as meritorious, because, forsooth, it gave 
him pain to destroy the pigeons. We have all 
heard of cases of religious mania in which parents 
have been known to murder their best-loved 
children in imitation of the story of Abraham's 
intended sacrifice of Isaac. To the introspective 
morality, and to religious systems based upon it, 
belongs the antithesis of sin and holiness, together 
with such notions as that the gravamen of an 
ethically-wrong action lies in its being an injury 



220 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

to the doer's self — understanding by this his 
" higher self." The newer ethical standpoint, 
the moral tendency, the dawnings of which we 
see at present, is necessarily opposed to this 
abstract morality centring in the individual. It 
does not follow that the antagonism need always 
be present to the mind of those who take this 
standpoint, but it is still there. The opposition 
itself need not even be intrinsically prominent in 
all cases, though none the less existent. The 
new point of view, when consistently held, sees 
moral wrong in no action that has not definite 
anti-social consequences. It recognises implicitly, 
where not explicitly, that the meaning and func- 
tion of conscience is, in the last resort, the identi- 
fication of individual interest with social interest. 
This identification does not, in the long run, imply 
sacrifice of individual interests, but it does imply 
undoubtedly for a long time to come the subordi- 
nation of individual to social interests, and there- 
fore it does involve self-sacrifice as an incident in 
the moral action of the individual. But this self- 
sacrifice is never more than an incident. To be 
morally admirable from this point of view, the 
self-sacrifice must always be clearly undertaken 
as a means to a definite social end. 

We spoke of another change of attitude as re- 
gards the ultimate telos of life and its relation to the 
world-purpose as a whole, namely, the sense of the 
impossibility of attaining to a satisfactory theoreti- 
cal formulation of that summum bonum we deem 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 221 

the "final goal of all." When we consider the 
matter more closely, it is indeed self-evident that 
any adequate formulation in thought or words 
of the world-purpose must imply finality. But 
we have already seen that finality in happiness, 
i.e. a happiness that has no becoming in it, an 
acttca/ity of happiness without a potentiality be- 
hind it, implies an abstraction and not a real, 
felt, happiness. Yet we have also seen that 
happiness, although not the whole of the te/os, 
is, nevertheless, an essential element therein. 
The Beatific Vision, conceived of as completely 
present in " one eternal glance," in the very 
completeness of its finality would reach out to 
a somewhat beyond itself, and that somewhat, 
assuming the completeness could but be annihi- 
lation, the higher nought. What applies to 
happiness in this connection, applies also to the 
te/os considered as synthesis. The te/os viewed 
thus, and apart from special reference to its 
hedonic side, means in the last resort neither 
more nor less than the Absolute as end for the 
individual consciousness. But the Absolute con- 
sidered as a final ens rea/issimum, a. wound-up 
static perfection, a consummated completeness 
in which all desire is satisfied and all purpose 
finally liquidated, is after all {pace Mr. Bradley) 
a monstrosity of abstraction. A being in which 
all antitheses (including that of being and appear- 
ance itself) are resolved into one all-embracing 
unity, is a somewhat lacking the conditions funda- 



222 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

mentally presupposed in a true synthesis — in 
other words, in reality. Since reality can never 
be viewed as such save under the form of at 
least two anthithetic elements, the abolition of 
either side of the antithesis (here no less than 
in the sphere of knowledge) leaves us with an 
abstraction and no reality, and the abstraction 
itself, when closely viewed, evinces itself as 
meaningless. A light without darkness would 
indeed be " the light that never was, on sea 
or land." It would be a light that was indis- 
tinguishable from darkness. A good which had 
completely absorbed evil, and with which no 
evil was to be contrasted, could not enter into 
consciousness as a real good. A God "too pure 
to look upon iniquity " would be a caput mortimm, 
no better than a " bloodless category." A beauty 
with no shadow of ugliness, actual or potential, 
to set it off, would not enter into any conscious 
synthesis as beauty. Similarly an absolute truth 
out of all relation to falsehood or error would be 
a colourless and worthless platitude, and would 
forfeit its character of truth in any intelligible 
sense. The reader will easily see that the fal- 
lacies here indicated are at basis the same fallacy 
as that which in theory-of-knowledge we have 
termed Pallogism, and which we have discussed 
at sufficient length in the course of the present 
work. No less than the philosophers in this 
respect, mystics, theologians, art-theorists, poets, 
and idealists of all descriptions have occupied 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 223 

themselves with the mad chase after abstractions 
that they have mistaken for higher realities. 
Well-nigh all our ideals, present and past, are, 
when closely viewed (in the form at least in 
which they have been presented to us), no more 
than hypostatised abstractions. The seekers 
after the ideal have hitherto failed to adequately 
grasp the fact that when one of the cardinal 
terms of an antithesis is destroyed, the reality 
itself embodied in their synthetic union is de- 
stroyed also, leaving a meaningless phrase behind 
it. They have failed to see that the complete 
absorption of one term in the other implies, not 
a higher reality, but no reality at all — in short, 
stagnation, annihilation, or what I have already 
alluded to as the " higher nought." The youthful 
delusion of reflective consciousness, with its cry- 
ing for the moon of an abstract-absolute, must, 
in the maturity of reflective consciousness, give 
place to the conviction that reality — be its plane 
low or high — lives only in the union in synthesis 
of what are per se antithetic and contradictory 
elements. 1 

We can hardly do better in analysing the 
nature and conditions of the supreme end of life, 
no less than those of subordinate ends, than 

1 The above, I need scarcely say, does not traverse the conten- 
tion that one side of an antithesis may be regarded as the positive, 
and its opposite as negative. The negative, after all, is only the 
otherness of the positive. What is meant is that, without this 
otherness (as its background), the positive disappears from con- 
sciousness altogether. 



224 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

occupy ourselves discussing the question of what 

is known as Pessimism. While fully recognising 

that mere abstract happiness, fier se, 
PGssiniism. 

does not constitute the telos, we have 

seen that it enters, as a necessary element, into 
it, in such wise that it affords a touchstone by 
which we may gauge the validity of all attempted 
formulations of the telos. Now what does the 
pessimist usually allege? What is the doctrine 
of some of the most representative exponents 
of Pessimism ? They contend that the sum of 
misery in the world not only outbalances the 
actual sum of happiness, but even that it tends 
to do so in a progressively-increasing ratio as 
the content of time unfolds itself. In this asser- 
tion, it may be noted, there are three important 
questions begged. Firstly, it is assumed that 
"happiness" and "misery" can be quantitatively 
measured, that it is possible to reduce all quali- 
tative difference in the content of happiness to 
the mere abstract category of happiness, per se, 
quantitatively considered. Secondly, the pro- 
blem is stated in terms of individual feeling, the 
organic individual being assumed as the sole 
norm and arbiter in the matter. Thirdly, the 
main trend of human evolution during the his- 
torical period — the period, that is, during which 
civilisation has been evolving — up to the present 
time, is usually assumed as the only possible one. 
As regards the first of the points mentioned, 
it will be observed to involve the assumption 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 225 

of happiness being an independent entity, and 
not merely element of a synthesis. The content 
of happiness is continually changing, Fipst 
and hence happiness is qualitatively pessimistic 
changing. Happiness, as realised, fallae y- 
"broadens down from precedent to precedent." 
The satisfaction of lower needs forces on the 
appearance, above the horizon of consciousness, 
of' new and higher needs. For example, for a 
man in want of food, clothes, or shelter, these 
are his telos — their attainment represents " happi- 
ness " for him. He can conceive of no happiness 
apart from them, or (in many cases) beyond 
them. He acquires these ; no longer is he a 
starving man in the street, but has food, clothing, 
and shelter enough. His material circumstances 
become, let us say, affluent. Still he is not 
happy. Happiness now consists for him in con- 
genial sexual intercourse, to obtain which now 
becomes his aim. This once acquired he turns 
to personal unity in one form or another, or to 
avarice. If he be a man with no intellectual 
or social instincts, he continues ringing the 
changes on these things till his dying day. If, 
on the other hand, he is normally developed 
intellectually, a sufficiency of the above neces- 
saries of life becomes for him merely a vantage- 
ground for the pursuit of some other goal of 
intrinsically different quality. He will now find 
his goal, for instance, in science, in art, in social 
or political activity. But at each stage, the goal 

p 



226 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

once attained, the ideal realised, it takes its place, 
as a matter of course, in the common level of 
his life, and a new end, representing a new 
happiness to be striven for, comes into view. 
Hence, argues the pessimist, each end attained 
simply serves to open up a new vista of further 
wants. The happiness, as realised, says he, is 
illusory, since, when the end supposed to involve 
it is reached, it seems simply to remove one 
obstacle to happiness in order to disclose others. 
At each stage, therefore, according to the pessi- 
mist contention, he fails to find happiness. Now 
this view is at once true and false. At each 
stage the man undeniably does obtain satisfaction 
or happiness. This positive happiness, however, 
which he has now realised, although in the 
moment of attainment it may seem complete, 
soon acquires the character of the commonplace, 
and tends to vanish proportionately. It is at 
this point that the new end, involving the new 
happiness, appears above the horizon of the 
consciousness. The fact of the exhaustibility 
of concrete happiness, as involved in any realised 
ideal, is, on the other hand, a fact the optimist 
is apt to overlook. Such is the inevitable 
dialectic of happiness, but the qualitative evolution 
that it implies, renders nugatory all calculations 
based on merely quantitative considerations. It 
is idle, for instance, to discuss whether a greater 
or less quantum of pleasure is derived by the 
sensual man from sensual enjoyments, or by 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 227 

the intellectual man from intellectual enjoyments. 
It is idle, as the two things are qualitatively 
incomparable. The mere sense of unimpeded 
activity of achievement itself undoubtedly im- 
plies an element of pleasure common to all 
forms of happiness in the pursuit of which the 
will is directly concerned. 1 

As to the distinction of quality, of the " higher " 
and "lower" in pleasure, the conviction we have 
that the former is higher — that it is, so to say, 
nearer the world-telos than the latter — seems to 
be an ultimate postulate of consciousness, i.e. it 
is involved in the ultimate self-consistency of 
consciousness. And this would seem to obtain 
quite apart from any question of the quantita- 
tive estimation of pleasure-value. Happiness or 
pleasure is an element running through every 
stage, through all momenta, of the world-process, 
of which no concrete end can be conceived that 
does not include it. The higher we go in this 
evolution, the more the other elements in this 
end come into prominence, the more the content 
is pursued for its own sake, and less and less for 
the happiness accompanying it. The foregoing 
observation, although primarily applying to the 
individual, may fairly be assumed as having an 
application to happiness as an element of purpose 
generally, in whatever relation we may conceive it. 

1 This fact is expressed physiologically in the unchecked trans- 
formation of centripetal into centrifugal nerve stimulations. {Cf. 
Munsterberg's " Psychology and Life," chapter ii.) 



228 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

The second fallacy of Pessimism, the assump- 
tion that the individual is the absolute norm in 
Second hedonic judgments, is based on the pre- 
pessimistie vious assumption, that self-conscious- 
fallacy. n ess, as involved with the organisation 
of an animal body — in other words, the human 
individual, as unit, is the ultimate natural form 
in which self-consciousness can be embodied. 
Now this assumption, I contend, is unjustified, 
whether or not we accept the hypothesis put 
forward in an earlier chapter. We have assuredly 
no justification, in any case, for dogmatically as- 
suming that the terms of individual feeling — of 
feeling, that is, as expressed in the self-conscious- 
ness involved with a particular human body — 
are the only terms in which pleasure-pain feeling, 
in which happiness and unhappiness, can be 
expressed at all. This assumes arbitrarily that 
the individual, in the sense mentioned, is not 
merely a metaphysical finality, and hence to be 
treated as a rounded-off completeness in himself, 
but also a physical finality in the order of evolu- 
tion in time. It would be absurd, of course, 
to deny that the individual consciousness, with 
its correlative human-animal organism, does re- 
present a definite stage, alike in the metaphysical 
analysis of consciousness-in-general and in the 
order of physical evolution, and hence may be 
justifiably treated, for special purposes, in ab- 
straction from all else. We may also regard the 
individual, considered in himself (apart from the 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 229 

social life and progress into which he enters), 
as a proximate end to himself. But unless we 
are prepared to commit ourselves to the absurdity 
of regarding the individual as in the last resort 
a self-sufficient and isolated entity, we must never 
lose sight of the fact that when we attempt to 
treat him, apart from the social organism within 
which he has developed, and of which he is, in 
a sense, the result, we are really dealing with 
an impossible abstraction. This may be con- 
venient for certain purposes, but is never more 
than a dialectical makeshift. In the same way 
we may regard the individual as, from the relative 
point of view, an end to himself ; but these 
abstractions, relatively correct and useful though 
they may be, only disclose their true meaning — 
often a very different one to their apparent 
meaning when viewed as abstractions — in their 
relation to the world and humanity considered 
as an organic whole. Viewed from this stand- 
point, the significance of the individual man is 
seen to reside, not in himself, but in the facts of 
his entering, as a component, into a continuing 
social life. He is simply a component unit in 
the total life of generations past, present, and 
future. The conception of the individual as 
isolated, as end to himself, confronts us in its 
extreme form in the practical world as the 
criminal type. But in a less extreme form it is 
also the attitude of the commonplace bourgeois 
individualist or man of the world. In theory it 



2 3 o THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

has been the sole point of view from which the 
"moral philosopher" has regarded man at all 
until comparatively recent times. The intro- 
spective morality, and the so-called universal 
religions founded upon it, at the head of which 
stands Christianity, have dealt in their own way 
with the practical results of this attitude of mind. 
They have postulated an imaginary higher in- 
dividual in theory, and have sought to reverse 
the individualist attitude in practice, with their 
salient categories of sin and holiness, by means 
of asceticism. But in the ascetic attitude in- 
dividualism is not abolished, but merely inverted. 
Self-denial, for its own sake, or as end-in-itself, 
is as intrinsically individualistic as self-indulgence 
as end-in-itself. In either case the point of view 
is limited to the individual, who is thus converted 
into an abstraction, but an abstraction that does 
duty as a self-sufficient entity. 

The intrinsically higher point of view to that 
of the self-centred man of the world is not what 
is usually regarded as its antithesis, namely, the 
ascetic, but is, on the contrary, one that transcends 
alike both these standpoints. This latter point 
of view, while recognising the personality and its 
immediate purpose of self-interest as constituting 
a proximate end, sees in it no more than a proxi- 
mate end, to wit, a stage — necessary, it may be, 
but still no more than a stage — towards some- 
thing higher than itself. But, it may be said, 
this is also the case with the introspective faiths 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 231 

above alluded to, with their ascetic ideals of 
conduct. Yet though apparently this is true, 
in reality it is not so. The introspective faiths 
may indeed point to a divinity, the spiritual side 
of things, or what not, into which the individual, 
by renouncing his self-interest, may become in 
some sense absorbed. But this latter is a con- 
ception, an imagination, special to the individual 
consciousness as such. As conceived by the 
individual, this God, or spiritual essence of 
things, is always a reflection of another — a 
higher, if you will — aspect of his own spiritual 
nature. It is the appeal of the natural individual 
to the spiritual individual. We therefore remain 
still within the ban of individualism. From the 
standpoint we are here dealing with, on the other 
hand, the standpoint which is embodied in what 
we have termed the newer tendency in moral 
sentiment, we see clearly that what are termed 
" bad," that is, the abstract-personal instincts of 
men, can only be effectually abolished by their 
transmutation, that is to say, by the identifica- 
tion through sheer necessity of circumstances of 
individual interest (in the narrower sense) with 
the interest of society as a whole. The abstract- 
individualistic, the anti-social, impulses thus, and 
thus only, will finally die out, through a process 
of self-exhaustion. The higher self, to which the 
individual subordinates himself, thus is no longer 
a transcendent divinity holding mystic communi- 
cation with his soul, but an immanent concrete 



232 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

social fact into which the individual now con- 
sciously enters as a physical and psychical factor. 
The antagonism, therefore, which seemed from 
a lower standpoint irreconcilable, has vanished. 
The pessimistic argument, also, in so far as it is 
based, as has largely been the case hitherto, on 
the individual as an abstract entity apart from 
the general movement of society, falls to the 
ground. Yet, though we now see the individual 
in a new light, and can no longer regard him 
per se as the unconditioned norm of pleasure 
and pain, good and evil, it still remains open 
for the pessimist to deny progress in the sense 
of the movement of human society towards a 
goal, or in a direction involving progressive 
increase of happiness as an element. This 
leads us naturally to the third fallacy of 
pessimism. 

The third assumption of the pessimist, which 
is equally an assumption of "the man-in-the- 

_,. . , street," is that the main trend of 

Third ' . 

pessimistic human progress, which from the dawn 
fallacy. f history up to the present day 
has been in the direction of the autonomy of 
the individual, will continue in this course. 1 
The above assumption underlies most of the 

1 We may observe in passing that the fallacy noticed in the last 
section is the intellectual product, or at least concomitant of this 
general autonomy of the individual, in its later stages. The 
loosening of the social bonds of the elder world has given colour 
to the treatment of the individual, theoretically, as a self-centred 
and self-sufficient unit. 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 233 

pessimistic theories, at any rate as to the 
future of human evolution. Yet that this too 
is a fallacy is becoming more evident every 
day to one who studies the economic conditions 
of the modern world. Such an observer can 
hardly fail to see that the autonomy of the 
individual is doomed, that it is disappearing 
under his very eyes. Without discussing the 
question here in its larger bearings, I contend 
that few will deny that we are face to face with 
conditions in the production and distribution of 
wealth which forebode a vast social transformation 
in the immediate future. It is enough to refer 
to the revolution going on in the domains of 
industrial invention and organisation, and to 
the growth of state and municipal enterprise in 
all departments. Each of these things in its 
own way naturally tends to the abolition of the 
notion of individual autonomy, and in so far 
also, to that of any necessary antagonism between 
individual and community as such. The present 
work not being specially a treatise on political 
economy, or any other historical development, it 
would be out of place to dilate much further 
on these matters. It is necessary, however, to 
allude to them in connection with our present 
problem as to the tendency of social evolu- 
tion towards increase or diminution of human 
happiness. 

We are too much accustomed to judge the 
present question from the relatively short span 



234 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

of time that is included under "history" — short, 
that is, in relation to the whole period of man's 
existence upon this planet. It may be quite true 
that a study of this limited period might lead us 
to the conclusion that happiness and misery 
have not so much positively increased or de- 
creased in total amount as varied in the relative 
proportion of their distribution. It seems to 
be the tendency of misery, as of happiness, to 
become less acute and more massive, less con- 
centrated and more widely distributed. The 
excessive hardships of the most fast-bound and 
hopeless class of serfs in the Middle Ages, the 
acute and devastating epidemics of that time, 
the oubliettes of the feudal castle, the torture- 
chamber of the criminal court, the perennial 
imminence of fire and sword, the general 
violence that characterised the social life — all 
these belong to a class of evils that have, 
under the influences of modern civilisation, 
either passed away entirely, or, at worst, have 
been mitigated past recognition of their former 
selves. 1 But in the present day, as a set-off 
against this, we have the ever-widening gulf 
between poverty and wealth, the volume of 
poverty growing in mass, if not in intensity. 
The sense of economic insecurity pervading all 
classes but the very wealthiest, is a constant 

1 Of course we leave out of account here the survivals of a 
similar condition of things in countries as yet imperfectly touched 
by modern civilisation. 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 235 

burden hardly compensated for by the increase 
in physical security of life and formal liberty. 
The present day shows us a huge agglomeration 
of coagulated misery in the proletarian quarters 
of the average modern city, with its ugliness, its 
filth, and its squalor, all expressing the sordid 
struggle for existence among the vast majority 
of. the population. We see the dreary hideous- 
ness of the modern world, with its commercialised 
production, for profit, consequent on the triumph 
of machine industry as exploited by the capitalist 
system, in all departments of industrial activity. 
With all their drawbacks — drawbacks which 
the panegyrist of modern times is accustomed 
to dilate upon with so much impressement — the 
Middle Ages exhibit to us a careless and joyous 
life for the majority, free, generally speaking, 
from over-work, grinding poverty, or carking 
care, lived for the most part in fresh air and 
amid healthy conditions. These material ad- 
vantages were accompanied by a rough -an d- 
rude, if you will, but unaffected natural culture, 
extending over all classes — a culture from which 
sprang the noblest products of art and fancy. 
The sacrifice of most of this is the price which 
we have, thus far, had to pay for our freedom 
from the exceptional and acute miseries peculiar 
to the earlier phase of society. But it would 
be a mistake to draw from the foregoing data 
of the conditions prevailing during what was, 
after all, a very limited period of history, any 



236 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

general conclusion as regards the increase or 
diminution of the sum-total of happiness in the 
future, or even as to its distribution. We may 
well conceive the whole period of civilisation 
with which history is concerned, as being itself, 
in a sense, a preparation for something organi- 
cally higher than itself, for a state of things 
which may, therefore, well involve a positive 
increment in happiness such as is not so clearly 
apparent in the comparison merely of one period 
of history with another. In this case the whole 
process of history, with its variations in the 
proportion of happiness and misery obtaining 
in different epochs, yet apparently without any 
definite result in the subordination of the one 
to the other, could only properly be judged 
in the light of its outcome in such a remoter 
future as we have indicated. We can only 
properly judge the various periods of civilisation 
in the light of what is to succeed civilisation. 
For only in the light of this can we see civilisa- 
tion in its true significance. 

However we may regard the, for us, ultimate 
goal of human evolution, whether or not we 
Good and accept the speculation suggested in 
eviL Chapter V., and conceive it as tending 

towards a new persona — a corporate conscious- 
ness, having its material ground in social condi- 
tions, just as our present individual consciousness 
has its material ground in organic conditions — the 
fact remains that the antithesis we comprehen- 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 237 

sively term good and evil, including happiness and 
its reverse, is one of those ultimate oppositions, 
lying deep down in the nature of things, which 
cannot be transcended without abolishing reality 
itself. But let us not be mistaken ; every concrete 
evil, i.e. all evil as particularised, all evil that is 
realised, as *' this evil thing," " this evil institu- 
tion," " this evil tendency," must necessarily pass 
away, since arising and perishing are inseparable 
from all time-content. Every content of reality 
that has begun in time must necessarily end in 
time, precisely so far as it has begun. Such 
necessity is given in the particularity attaching to 
it. This fundamental truth may be formulated in 
the guise of a reasoned explanation as follows : — 
Every particular object, by the fact of its having 
come into existence when before it was not, shows 
that it had no necessity attaching to it. It is 
therefore contingent upon the infinity of things 
in time, and in the ceaseless change proper to the 
time-content it is uninterruptedly exposed to the 
occurrence of a collocation of circumstances in- 
compatible with its existence, which collocation 
must obtain at some point of time or other, near 
or remote, time and its content being infinite. 
Hence all real evil is transitory. 1 What does not 

1 The transitionness of evil spoken of in the text does not, of 
course, mean that any particular evil necessarily passes away within 
the life circle of the given concrete system into which it enters. 
A disease may pass away from the human organism, or it may 
destroy that organism. The symptoms of old age, again, accen- 
tuate themselves till the death of the human being. Even parti- 



238 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

pass away is the potentiality of evil, or, if we like 
to call it so, the immanence of evil-in-general. 
Evil is immanent in all reality as part of its 
essence. This is what we mean by the pseudo- 
concept evil into which reflective thought trans- 
forms the alogical element of evil as present in 
the object. It is this abstract quality of evil that 
is eternal, in the sense of present in all time. 
This abstract quality, evil, runs through all the 
divers concrete and particular evils that, in the 
guise of realities, enter and disappear from the 
time-content. 

By " good," in the empirical and relative sense, 
we mean all that content of consciousness that 
suggests or makes for the supreme good, our 
ultimate telos of life. But this ultimate telos, how- 
ever we may conceive it, includes, as we have 
seen, pleasure or happiness as an essential ele- 
ment. All pleasure, as suck, therefore, is good, 

cular evils in a given society may destroy that society, and hence 
cannot be said to pass away from it. Our point is, that if the 
concrete or real system into which they enter continues itself to 
exist, all particular evils arising within it must necessarily pass 
away. The period of developmental existence of the animal or 
human individual is too short, it is in its nature too precarious for 
the above principle in many cases to have time to operate. Given 
a larger and hence more enduring system — say, a given society or 
a given race — and the truth of the principle, though even still not 
absolute, will be much more obvious. But in the case of humanity 
as a whole, to which we are more particularly referring in the text, 
the principle has, for all practical purposes, a full application, since 
humanity in its widest sense, as including all possible develop- 
ments, must be conceived as a continuity without reference to any 
final term. 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 239 

viewed abstractly. This character only becomes 
modified when treated, not per se, but as a factor 
in a synthesis comprising other elements than 
itself. It is the whole wherein it realises itself 
that determines the value of pleasure or happi- 
ness, properly speaking, and therewith the ques- 
tion of preferability, including the solution of the 
old conundrum of "the hog happy and Socrates 
miserable." Abstractly considered, that is, as 
regards mere quantum of pleasure, sensual de- 
lights, i.e. those hedonic syntheses, considered as 
ends, in which pure sensuality predominates, may 
very possibly outbid those other syntheses in 
which what are usually classified as the intellectual 
and spiritual elements are the salient ones. The 
tendency to self-exhaustion so conspicuous in 
" sensuous delights," the obverse side of which 
is ennui, of itself shows us the unworkability, in 
the long run, of any hedonistic theory that takes 
account solely of pleasure in the abstract, con- 
sidered quantitatively. The new synthesis in- 
volving qualitatively " higher factors," as we term 
them, enters the consciousness as purpose, inas- 
much as the want of a new synthesis involving 
these higher factors is felt as entailing a greater 
quantum of pain than the mere satisfaction of the 
lower or sensual purpose does of pleasure. 1 The 

1 This apart from another generally perceived fact, that while 
the lower or sensual pleasures, as well as their hedonic antithesis, 
are, as a rule, more concentrated or acute, the " higher " (in this 
qualitative order of value) are more profound, more massive. The 
emotions of joy and grief, however, in their paroxysmal expressions, 



2 4 o THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

fulfilment of a higher synthetic purpose, therefore, 
appeals to the willing consciousness at this stage 
as more desirable than that of any lower purpose. 
Compare the cases, for example, of the man who 
is prepared to sacrifice all the good things of 
life for an artistic end, a scientific end, or a 
socio-political end. In dealing with this question 
we must not expect too much precision. In the 
reality that .we are here analysing, no less than 
elsewhere, we have before us an entanglement. 
As in theory-of-knowledge we have an entangle- 
ment of apperceptive syntheses often difficult to 
distinguish with precision in reflective thought, 
so here we have an entanglement of purposive 
syntheses, of teleological wholes, wreathing within 
each other and interchanging, of which it is 
equally difficult often for reflective thought to 
determine the place of any given one with exac- 
titude. In these questions generally, sharp boun- 
dary lines can seldom be drawn, or at best only 
in their broadest aspects. 

If pleasure, in its widest sense, is to be regarded 
as of the essence of all good, whether ultimate or 
Pain as proximate, and hence in a derivative 
negative sense, " good " per se (although the 
value. content of any particular pleasure may 

be " evil "), so pain is always an essential con- 
stituent of evil. Pain as such can never be 

partake largely of both these characteristics, being both profound 
and acute. Hence they are generally and rightly regarded as 
typical forms of pleasure-pain. 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 241 

anything else than evil ; it is, so to say, the hall- 
mark of concrete evil. It can only lose its 
character relatively of evil-ness in so far as it 
enters into a synthesis, which in its totality 
assumes the form of means to an end in which 
pleasure inheres. But even as such, pain in 
itself remains evil. Neither pleasure nor pain, 
strictly speaking, lose their good or evil character 
from their relation to the content into which 
they enter. They are antithetic alogicals which 
penetrate consciousness through and through. 
The specific content into which they enter may, 
in its concreteness, be good or it may be evil ; 
and hence, in practice, we apply the same 
epithet to the pleasure or the pain, and for 
practical purposes rightly so. But, philoso- 
phically speaking, we are not strictly accurate 
in thus doing. 

It remains, before concluding the present 
chapter, to return to the question raised above, 
as to the tendency and, so to say, the _ . 
general law of human evolution in evil as 

this connection. We have already measured 

by pleasure 
pointed out that the good and evil an a pa i n \ n 

that are eternal (that persist as basal human 

1 • ^u u 1 • evolution, 

elements in the hedonic consciousness 

throughout all its phases), are abstract good and 
evil considered apart from any specific deter- 
mination as constituent of any given synthesis in 
the real world. Every such given synthesis, all 
incarnated evil, so to speak, as surely as it now 

Q 



242 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

exists so surely will a time come when it will 
have ceased to exist. The same, of course, 
mutatis mutandis, applies to every incarnated 
good ; here also, as surely as the good is here 
now, so surely will it have perished in a future 
time-content. But then, it may be alleged, does 
not this imply an eternal Dualism, a never-ending 
see-saw of Ormuzd and Ahriman, without either 
gaining any permanent advantage over the 
other ? To this I answer No ! For, though 
concrete good and concrete evil are alike tran- 
sient, yet there is a difference between the two 
considered as elements of the time-process in 
its general movement. Concrete or particularised 
evil appears as the beginning, or as the first term, 
of a given cycle of evolution in the dialectic of 
the time-process. The good, on the other hand, 
acquired by its elimination 1 or through its trans- 
formation, evinces itself as the telos, the fulfil- 
ment or completed reality of the cycle in question. 
Hence it is evident that a " point " is always 
given in favour of the good, in the sense that 
all concrete evil issues in concrete good, and not 
conversely. Thus the trend of all evolution is 
towards the good, notwithstanding that we can- 

1 I have not yet gone into the question, so interesting from the 
psychological and other points of view, of the mere negation or 
cessation of pain itself constituting positive pleasure and vice versa. 
This point, which plays such a large part in the writings of the 
pessimist school, falls to be dealt with rather from a more concrete 
standpoint {i.e. that of the science of Hedonics), than the purely 
abstract analysis with which we are here chiefly occupied. 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 243 

not conceive this good as ever absorbing and 
exhausting all possibility of evil. The latter 
assumption, which would mean not the ending 
of a cycle but the winding up of the process of 
reality altogether — in short, the ending of eternity 
itself — is a reappearance in this sphere of thought 
of our old friend the pallogistic fallacy, already dis- 
posed of in connection with theory of knowledge. 
The moment evil puts on the vesture of reality 
and is embodied in this evil, here and now — a 
particular actual evil out of an infinity of possible 
evil — it has become mortal. Thus every evil 
falling within human experience is doomed. For 
example, all ignorance, all un-knownness, once 
become definite must vanish in knowledge. The 
fact that it is known as unknown is the first 
step towards the extinction of its un-knownness. 
Though the unknown may always be with us, 
any this unknown, we may rest assured, will soon 
cease to be unknown. We cannot formulate a 
problem as unknowable. This I have pointed 
out elsewhere. " The fact of your being able 
to formulate it is sufficient proof that it is not 
per se incapable of solution. I am here speak- 
ing of course, of real problems, and not such as 
have their origin in a misunderstanding or false 
assumption. We may never be able to explain 
the process of creation out of nothing, or to form 
an inventory of the feathers in the wing of the 
angel Gabriel, to know whether the devil really 
has a tail or not, but we may reasonably expect 



244 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

to find a rational formula expressing the essential 
nature of reality or the concrete world and of 
man's relations thereto — of thought and being, 
will and necessity. When I say ' we ' I mean, of 
course, humanity, not necessarily this generation 
or the next" ("Ethics of Socialism," pp. 217-218). 
It is similar with other specific determinations 
of evil. The ugliness that is recognised as ugly 
has had its death-sentence passed upon it. His- 
tory affords illustrations enough of the point we 
have been elaborating. " The concrete realisa- 
tion of evil in any given thing has been the 
signal for its destruction. A physical fact no 
sooner assumes the character of an evil in the 
social mind than conscious energy is aroused 
against it, and sooner or later it disappears. As 
an illustration take epidemic disease. As soon 
as zymosis loomed big as an evil in human 
consciousness, the improved sanitary science 
began to arise which has found increasingly 
successful means of checking it with every 
prospect of its ultimate extinction. The recog- 
nition by a William Morris, a Burne-Jones, and 
others of the ugliness of modern English decora- 
tion x has denoted the beginning of its end. But 
this is particularly noticeable in the moral and 
social sphere. Any institution, form of society, 
belief or practice which man has become con- 
scious of as an evil has speedily disappeared. 
Three centuries ago, and more or less until the 
1 What we should now call Mid-Victorian. 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 245 

French Revolution, the evils of feudalism filled 
the mental horizon of good and thoughtful men. 
It seemed to them that were the cruelties and 
abuses of the feudal noble, the tyranny of priest- 
hoods, the restrictions of the guild system, of 
local jurisdictions, and the unrestrained caprice 
of monarchs, abolished or mitigated, all would 
be well. These evils have been all at least 
mitigated and some of them abolished. Earnest 
men to-day see another and totally different set 
of evils, and the fact of their seeing them as 
evil is one indication of their disappearance 
within a measurable distance of time" ("Ethics 
of Socialism," p. 218). 

It is a consolation indeed to reflect that every 
"evil," physical or moral, within the field of 
experience at any given moment is in its nature 
transitory and destined to be overcome by its 
corresponding "good." The particular or con- 
crete evil in question vanishes completely and 
for ever. What does not vanish is the element 
or principle of evil in general undetermined and 
unrealised. Every realised ideal, every concrete 
good, although it has completely exhausted and 
vanquished the evil to which it was originally 
opposed, discloses, nevertheless, in its own com- 
plete realisation, a vista, gradually increasing in 
distinctness, of some new evil or set of evils un- 
dreamt of before — evils specially growing out of 
itself. These in their turn become the starting- 
point of a new cycle, in which the same process 



246 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

is repeated. The assumption of the absolute 
triumph of good per se, then, over evil per se, is 
as much of a chimera as the search for a light in 
which is no darkness — the assumption involving 
a pure abstraction lacking the conditions of a 
real synthesis. We may, however, put the case 
hypothetically, and say : Did the case not re- 
semble the relation of the asymptote to the 
hyperbola — were there a finality to the infinite 
process — then that would imply the complete 
absorption of evil by good. The result of an 
investigation, as the matter stands, can do no 
more than indicate to us that there is an un- 
doubted increment of good, with its pleasure, over 
evil, with its pain, at the conclusion of every cycle 
— at the moment, that is, when the realised good 
which was its end has completely supplanted the 
realised evil to which it was opposed, and before 
the new evil destined to be disclosed by the time- 
process (in this realised good itself) has appeared 
prominently above the horizon. To this process 
of the absorption of realised evil by realised good, 
of specific misery by specific happiness, it would 
seem that we are unable to assign any finality. 

In our discussion of the telos of life we have 
referred to the new doctrine, fashionable just now 
Summary at Oxford, which is called by its pro- 
of the tagonists sometimes Pragmatism and 
chapter. sometimes Humanism, but which also 
might be termed Neo-Schopenhauerianism. This 
school would regard conscious reality as a system 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 247 

of practical postulates, i.e. as the creation of will, 
as the product of purposive activity. We have 
given reasons for regarding this doctrine as in- 
valid, since it belongs to that class of theories 
that would whittle down what should be a real 
synthesis, to one of its elements merely, thereby 
resulting in the hypostasis and often apotheosis 
of what is, truly viewed, an abstraction. We have 
shown that the end of reality, the ultimate goal 
to which reality tends, must also constitute a 
synthesis, a synthesis more perfect, more com- 
plete, than that of reality in its usual and more 
limited sense. Happiness itself, though indeed 
a necessary element in this summum bonum, is 
nevertheless not the complete summum bonum 
but merely a factor therein. Throughout the 
period of human history this ultimate telos of 
the world and of life has been formulated in 
various ways by religious and philosophic thought. 
But in all these formulations the dual assumption 
has invariably been made (1) of a direct relation 
between the individual consciousness (the indi- 
vidual soul) and the ultimate world-principle ; 
and (2) of a final goal of all, attainable by the 
individual, by means of this direct relation. This 
view, we have pointed out, has of late been 
steadily waning before the notion (whether de- 
finitely formulated or only instinctively felt) that 
the way of destiny towards the telos lies not in 
any introspective relation between the " soul " of 
the individual man and the ultimate principle of 



248 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

consciousness, but along the more prosaic path 
of social development. It amounts to this, that 
the goal of life cannot be attained by the indi- 
vidual, qua individual — stretch out towards it as 
he may — but that, however regarded, the realisa- 
tion of this goal lies on the other side of a long, 
it may be arduous, cycle of sociological stadia; 
and we cannot but consider this as a highly 
significant change of attitude. The former view, 
that of the great introspective religions — the " uni- 
versal " religions, as they are termed — has held 
the field among earnest-minded thinkers through- 
out the later phases of civilisation. It is pre- 
eminently the individualist ideal, which supplanted 
the at once vague and limited social, or rather 
kinship, ideals of primitive man. The tribesman 
of early society thought of himself not as an 
independent individual, but as member of his 
tribal society, which was, so to say, his own larger 
life. The function of civilisation, historically con- 
sidered, has been the achievement of the inde- 
pendence of the individual on the economical 
basis of private property. The speculative indi- 
vidualism embodied in the great ethical religions 
of the world, was another facet of the same stage 
of social development. This individualist stage 
having done its work in human evolution, it is 
hardly too much to assume that we are on the 
threshold of a fresh stage, in which the ethical 
and speculative view of the telos will wear quite 
a new aspect to what it has worn heretofore. Of 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 249 

this aspect the change of attitude already spoken 
of seems to be the precursor. In ethics this 
change of attitude is marked by the surrender of 
the ascetic notion of the destruction, the mor- 
tification, or at least the complete subjection, of 
the personality, in favour of the formula we have 
given as the identification of personal interest 
with social interest. The perfection of the indi- 
vidual, not through himself — either as such or as 
mirrored in the God of his imagining — but through 
society, is the idea underlying the new ethic ; 
and this doctrine involves the complete inversion 
of the traditional ethical theory as promulgated 
by all the great historical religions. 

Hitherto our ideals have been based upon the 
hypostasis of abstraction, as we have repeatedly 
pointed out in the course of this chapter. In 
the department of epistemology we have the 
pallogist who seeks a reality in which the logi- 
cal has absorbed the alogical. In the sphere 
of Hedonics we have the optimist who postu- 
lates a telos in which good and a fortiori 
happiness has completely absorbed evil, and, 
a fortiori, misery ; while in the same sphere 
we have his converse, the pessimist, who postu- 
lates evil as having extinguished good. The 
mystic seeks a spiritual "light in which there 
is no darkness." The theologian imagines a 
being too pure to look upon iniquity. The 
artist dreams of an ideal beauty that excludes 
the shadow of ugliness. The speculative philo- 



250 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

sopher seeks the telos of reality in an Absolute 
which is form without matter, an actuality in 
which all potentiality is sucked up and ex- 
hausted. As we have said before, this juvenile 
superstition of reflective consciousness, crying 
for the moon of the abstract Absolute, must give 
way in the maturity of reflective consciousness 
to the conviction that reality lives only in the 
union (in synthesis) of antithetic and contradic- 
tory elements. Taken in conjunction with the 
modern insight gradually forcing itself upon 
reflective thought — namely, that there is no 
short circuit from the individual consciousness 
here and now to the ultimate ideal, the world- 
telos, but that the way to this telos leads solely 
through the unfolding harmony of social rela- 
tionships — this more mature conviction regarding 
reality and its goal leads us to a further con- 
sideration. The latter concerns what we may 
call the dynamic of reality, to wit, its unfolding 
in the time-series, taking the evolution of human 
history as type of this process. Reflection on 
this process shows us that, though all specific 
evil passes away, yet in the very good into 
which that evil is absorbed there is further 
potentiality of evil — albeit not the same evil ; 
in other words, that though the particular evil 
thing passes away, the potentiality of evil in 
general remains, being coincident with con- 
sciousness itself. But, it may be said, the same 
is true of good : the good, as realised, with the 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 251 

evanescence of particularity attaching to it also, 
and just as inevitably, passes away. "Though 
the morning shall come, the night shall come 
also." But there is a difference between the 
two cases. The good realises itself as the telos 
of every dialectical cycle through which the 
process works ; the dynamic of reality always 
implies a progressive approximation to absolute 
good — to the summum bonum — although the 
latter may never be absolutely attained. This 
approximation and relative realisation of good 
in all its forms, this appearance of evil as the 
middle term of a cycle in the dynamical process 
of reality — a germ only at the beginning of the 
cycle, and exhausted and done away with at its 
close {i.e. in its realised form as a definite and 
particular evil) — is strictly all that we can dis- 
cover by investigating the conditions of reality. 
But it is already something, for it shows us 
plainly that there is always a "point" given in 
the process in favour of the good. Realised 
good, in some sense, appears as the beginning 
and as the end of every dialectical process, evil 
being realised in the middle phases alone. This 
is what we meant by saying that a point is 
always given in favour of the good. 

We come now to the question that consti- 
tutes the innermost core, the true inwardness 
of the matter under discussion. Can we envi- 
sage the summum bonum, the telos of the real 
•process? Can we give any positive formulation 



252 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

of it ? Our whole discussion has tended, I 
think, to show that we cannot ; that the Abso- 
lute, as end-goal of the dynamic of reality, of 
the process of reality in time, eludes the modes 
of consciousness in which we " live and move 
and have our being." It eludes them, no less 
than does the Absolute, as the ultimate unity 
and completion of knowledge as such — of the 
static of consciousness as we may term it by 
comparison. This perfected synthesis of know- 
ledge in which the antithesis knower and known 
has lost its significance likewise eludes the modes 
of consciousness actualised in us. But if we 
cannot divine in feeling, much less formulate 
in thought, any final, or indeed any but the 
most proximate, purpose of the time-process, the 
fact that our analysis has disclosed to us the 
truth that this process exhibits at every stage 
an increment of good over evil — a gradual 
harmonisation of the system within systems of 
which the world of consciousness consists, over 
the warring particularity of their components — 
represents no slight gain. If we seek for more 
than this then, as the consciousness through 
which we work is at present constituted, 
we are seeking after will-o'-the-wisps which 
cannot be formulated in thought, since they 
lack the conditions of a real synthesis. In 
acknowledging this dynamical, this asymptotic 
perfection, this eternal movement of conscious- 
ness and of the object-world "spun out" of 



FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 253 

itself, towards the good, which, if not precisely 
" ourselves," here and now, is yet still less " not 
ourselves," we have assuredly seized the highest 
ideal that lies within our grasp. Such an ideal 
may surely afford us more inexhaustible hope, 
and therefore more stimulus to action, than any 
of those ideals professing to bear upon them 
the impress of finality, which have served the 
world hitherto. 



VIII 

PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 

The problem of the one and the many, has, from 

the dawn of speculation, been recognised as the 

crux of metaphysic. There are two 
The . . 

mystery forms in which the problem of the one 

of the and the many presents itself, that of 

the one of many and that of the one 

in many. The one of many, exclusively concerns 

the alogical, in this case the particular, aspect of 

reality. The one in many, on the other hand, 

concerns reality as a synthesis. It was in the 

latter sense that it interested Plato and the 

ancients generally. It was the relation of the 

logical universal to the alogical sense-particular — 

how the latter participated in the former, how the 

former was corrupted by the latter — that formed 

the theme of philosophic speculation in the 

classical world from Plato to Plotinos. In the 

first sense of the problem, as we have said, we 

are concerned with the element of the particular 

alone. The puzzle is one between its qualitative 

and quantitative modes. We are not dealing 

here with the particular sense - term and the 

thought-universal, we are not dealing with the 



PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 255 

many-ness of sense and the one-ness of thought, 
but with a given one of sense as against the 
infinity of other similar ones of sense actual and 
possible. We have in Chapter III. analysed 
particularity in its general bearings. From this 
it will be evident that, owing to the alogical 
character of the particular considered per se, a 
complete knowledge of the particular or indi- 
vidual aspect of reality is impossible. The self- 
centred uniqueness of the individual has been 
more than once remarked upon in recent philo- 
sophical literature. It is a point that seems to 
have specially struck Mr. H. G. Wells (see the 
essay in "Mind," vol. xiii., No. 51). Certain 
it is that the element of alogical particularity 
in the real individual thing or person gives it 
or him uniqueness. This uniqueness extends to 
all individuals, but in different degrees, from the 
realm of mechanism to that of organic or psychic 
life. The higher we go and the more perfectly the 
individual represents a self-contained system, the 
more obviously will the uniqueness strike us. 

The particular as realised, especially as realised 
in a more or less self-contained or organic syn- 
thesis, becomes the individual, for the 
term "individual" in this sense must anty™^ 
not be confounded with the mere bare 
particular. All reality is in a sense individual in 
so far as it is reality at all, but the word individual 
usually implies an object or real thing that is also 
per se an organic whole in some sense or other. 



256 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

We do not impute individuality, for example, to 
mechanically produced things, as a rule. A 
match or a cannon-ball is not in the true sense 
of the word individual. Every match or cannon- 
ball expresses merely a bald synthesis of particular 
and universal. On the other hand, a plant may 
exhibit that internal uniqueness which justifies the 
application in a special sense to the particular 
instance, of the term " individual." Individuality 
implies a special causal efficacy which the mere 
particular does not possess. In the animal king- 
dom the tendency of the particular instance to 
assume individuality becomes more marked than 
in the vegetable kingdom, while in human beings 
and in human societies it reaches its highest ex- 
pression. Now the complete knowledge of this 
individual aspect of reality is impossible. We can 
never know the object-world in its uniqueness. 
Our apprehension of reality in its individual aspect 
is confined to the imperfect knowledge of a frag- 
ment at most. For the rest, we have to content 
ourselves with knowing it through symbols merely. 
To take an instance from one department only, 
how much does the greatest historical scholar 
know of the concrete detail of history? How 
little we comprehend the springs of personal 
action, even of our contemporaries, is a common- 
place remark. How much must our ignorance 
be intensified as regards persons living in a past 
age. But, apart altogether from this, the detail 
of fact, of events, of the life of a period, even 



PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 257 

that which we know best, is for the most part 
submerged in time. What the most persevering 
scholar can collect is never much more than an 
insignificant fraction of the whole. We are apt 
to forget, in our shorthand generalisations, our 
symbolic conceptions, concerning history, that in 
all ages, the life, the living reality of a period, is 
a seething mass of detail, in other words, of in- 
dividuality — individuality of personal and social 
factors and individuality of events ; for an event, 
a happening in time, or a series of such happen- 
ings, may also possess that internal uniqueness 
which constitutes individuality. It is difficult for 
us to realise that in all ages, every social group, 
every clan and tribe, every town, every village 
and hamlet, not to mention every individual man 
and woman, have had more or less unique life- 
histories of their own. Yet the total amount we 
know of these life-histories as regards all ages is 
infinitesimal. 1 Thus the bulk of the reality of 
any given age, of any given country, eludes us. 
It cannot be taken up into our intellectual 
system, and hence it is lost to those symbolic 
conceptions of which our historical knowledge 
consists, and which are present to our minds 
when we speak of any historical period — the 

1 The force of what is said here can only be fully realised by the 
historical student who has worked himself into the detail of a 
particular period. He alone can fully appreciate the infinite 
immensity of the particularity, the minutiae, of history in all 
periods. His very knowledge indicates to him the vastness of his 
ignorance. 

R 



258 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

eighteenth century, the Middle Ages, Antiquity, 
&c. Now the question may be asked how far the 
truth of our experience would be modified were 
this mass of detail taken up into it. Our out- 
look on history, were this the case as regards 
the human past, would certainly be very different 
from what it is now. It need not necessarily 
contradict our present symbolic conceptions, the 
intellectual shorthand into which we transform 
our meagre knowledge of the living concrete 
past, but it would certainly in most cases modify 
them beyond all recognition. What place, then, 
has this limitless mass of particularity, of which 
the above is one illustration only — what place 
has even the individuality, the uniqueness of 
content which accompanies it in such profusion 
— what place has it all, I say, in the system of 
reality, of conscious experience as a whole? 
Are we to assume it as existing in some sense 
in an absolute consciousness, the complement 
of our empirical consciousness with its finite 
centre? The alternative would seem to be to 
regard the truth of a great part of reality as 
hopelessly lost. We have here only referred 
to the particularisation of the object-world, but 
similar remarks will apply to the particularisa- 
tion in the subject. Every diremption of con- 
sciousness as particular, as this consciousness 
over against the other postulated conscious foci, 
gives rise to another instance of substantially 
the same problem. Of the problem of the one 



PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 259 

in many, of the universal in the particular, as 
the main problem of metaphysic, we are all 
familiar. But here we have a problem the 
stress of which lies in the opposition of the 
one to the many, of the particular to the par- 
ticular, of the qualitative aspect of particularity, 
which is at the basis of individual uniqueness, 
to the quantitative aspect which is at the basis 
of individual futility and transitoriness. This 
applies, of course, to the individuality of the 
particular, whatever form it take, whether of 
personal character as such, or of events, or of 
artistic products, or of one landscape as con- 
trasted with others, and so forth. In history 
as elsewhere, we may remind the reader, it is 
this alogical element of the particular, the many, 
which is the driving force of progress and of 
events. It has, of course, to operate within the 
frame-work of the logical. There is undoubtedly 
law in every department of human evolution. 
These determinate laws can never of themselves 
exhaust the meaning of the historical process (cf. 
the discussion on Chance and Law in Chapter 
III.). The problem here is to determine the 
inner significance for reality, as a whole — of the 
element of uniqueness, of individuality, as dis- 
tinguished from that of mere particularity and of 
mere universality, in the synthesis of which, the 
bare real is given. 

Pluralism as an ultimate formulation of the 
principle of reality is hardly adopted, at least 



26o THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

explicitly, by any serious metaphysical thinker in 
the present day. I emphasise the word " meta- 
physical " because there may be certain psycho- 
Monism logical thinkers who, nominally at any 
versus rate, profess adhesion to it. The most 

Pluralism. ru di m entary metaphysical analysis suf- 
fices to show us its untenability. The indi- 
vidual consciousness either comprises the whole 
universe within itself (the position of Solipsism), 
or, as Mr. Bradley has shown, it is incomplete 
and contradictory per se, and thereby proclaims 
its own want of finality, and this would not be 
obviated by the postulation of a numerical in- 
finity. Moreover, we need scarcely remind the 
reader that metaphysical Pluralism traverses the 
first of our fundamental postulates, as discussed 
in Chapter I. That it is incompatible with our 
ultimate test of truth, that of self-consistency of 
consciousness, is sufficiently obvious, even from 
what has just been said, without labouring this 
point further. In fact, it would seem unnecessary 
in this place to weary the reader with a recapitu- 
lation of the well-known arguments, by which the 
impossibility of Pluralism as an ultimate philo- 
sophical resting-place has been often enough 
demonstrated. But there is, nevertheless, a pro- 
blem connected with the opposition of the one and 
the many in the subject of consciousness, that, 
namely, of the relation between the subject con- 
sidered as absolute prius, and as particularised in 
the finite conscious centre — the individual ego. 



PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 261 

It may perhaps here be desirable to review 
briefly an argument that has already been dealt 
with elsewhere in the present work, namely, the 
justification for speaking of the ultimate principle 
of consciousness as subject. This is largely, I 
take it, a question of terminology. Mr. Bradley 
would apparently object to his Absolute being 
regarded as subject or ego. He is fond of 
endeavouring to show that ego, self, will, are 
what he calls ." subsequent constructions," and 
do not represent elemental conditions of con- 
sciousness or experience at all. This point of 
view is sure not to lack a certain popularity 
in the present day. It is all the rage to re- 
peatedly throw back into the crucible every 
notion that has hitherto done duty in metaphysic, 
and the word "ego" has been for long a red 
rag to the Philistine bull. But I venture to 
think that we have here to do with a confusion 
between a principle in its immediacy and the 
corresponding idea of reflection. The latter, 
together with the whole of reflective thought 
for that matter, is, of course, a secondary or 
subsequent construction. The subject, like the 
object, is undoubtedly "contained by experience" 
in the sense that the primary synthesis of con- 
sciousness is the condition of its self-recoenition, 
but it is none the less presupposed as element 
in this synthesis. There is no stage of con- 
sciousness, I contend, in which the elements of 
this primary synthesis are not traceable. You 



262 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

may ignore them in your language, or even in 
your thought, but you are implying them all 
the time. You may readily enough show that 
subject and object, ego and non-ego, in a developed 
form, are subsequent constructions. But this is 
really beside the question. If the antithesis of 
subject and object in its elementary shape is, 
as antithesis, primary and ultimate, it is no less 
true, i.e. recognisable, that of these antitheses 
the subject has primary validity in the sense 
that on a critical scrutiny the object discloses 
itself as nothing more than the otker-ness of the 
subject, while this can never be reversed. The 
subject never discloses itself as the mere other- 
ness of the object, inseparable from it though it 
may be within the conscious synthesis. 

Accepting, then, as we inevitably must, whether 
we admit it or not, the ultimate subject as the 
basis of the empirical " centre of consciousness," 
as Mr. Bradley would term it, or the personal ego, 
self, or soul, as others would term it, 1 the pro- 
blem, the perhaps insoluble problem, is as to the 
meaning of the one with reference to the other. 
What is the meaning of the subject of conscious- 

1 I am perfectly well aware of the fact that the above words are 
sometimes used not for the empirical ego as centre of conscious- 
ness, but for the mind or object-self, i.e. the ensemble of 
individual experiences special to oneself as contained within the 
memory-synthesis. This is Kant's "object of the internal sense," 
the "object-ego" of some writers. It is important to keep this 
meaning of the terms ego, self, soul, &c, distinct from that of the 
personal ego as men particular diremption of the subject of all con- 
sciousness. 



PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 263 

ness considered per se, on the one hand, and as 

determined as myself — this particular personality 

—on the other hand. This problem is more or 

less directly connected with that of the way in 

which we envisage the Absolute — whether as a 

complete self-determined system of unchanging 

perfection, or as a principle merely of eternal 

change. To this point we shall return later on. 

A problem here arises which, however, many 

would regard rather as psychological than as 

metaphysical, though it undoubtedly . 

has a metaphysical bearing. I refer agreement 

to the determination per se of alogical and 

. T , . difference, 

elements. Let us take sensation. 

Feltness or sensation as such discloses intrinsic 
differences within itself. We have not merely 
the apparent disparity between the different 
senses themselves, e.g. between sight and hear- 
ing, but we have far-reaching differences of 
quality within the same sense. Now, this agree- 
ment and difference of quality in sensation may 
be described as a relation, although certainly 
not as a logical relation. We may regard the 
specific distinctions between the several senses 
no less than the differences of quality within 
any one sense as derivative, if one will, from an 
original homogeneous whole of undifferentiated 
feltness. But none the less the problem remains 
that these differences arise within this whole, 
and that they disclose themselves as existent 
in mere sensation or feltness. Now, the question 



264 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

arises as to what metaphysical value we are to 
assign to these alogical determinations, standing 
in the relation of agreement or contrast to one 
another. Are we to regard this alogical re- 
lation as indicating a transition in the sphere 
of the object, the transition from mere sense to 
thought? The differentiation as regards quality 
or intensity of sensation within itself does involve 
a relation over and above the mere sensation itself, 
notwithstanding that it is no relation of thought. 
This point of identity and contrast in the mere 
feltness of sensation might possibly have a bear- 
ing on the theory of aesthetics. In any case it 
should require dealing with in any attempt at a 
systematic interpretation of the world from the 
standpoint of philosophy. 

Mr. Bradley has introduced into philosophical 
terminology the terms "adjective," "adjectival," 
Subject ^ c '' as a Pplied to that which is self- 
and contradictory and unreal per se, but 

adjective. wn i cn finds its reality and its mean- 
ing solely in the completed synthesis of his Ab- 
solute. It is doubtful, perhaps, whether Mr. 
Bradley regards his Absolute as subject at all, 
i.e. as the ultimate " centre of feeling " (to use 
his favourite expression), of which the subor- 
dinate finite "centres of feeling" are but the 
pale expression. So far as I understand the 
Bradleyan doctrine, the Absolute remains nothing 
more than the final and all-embracing synthesis 
of all the terms given in experience with their 



PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 265 

relations. But if I am correct in so reading the 
doctrine in question, I would point out that this 
reduces the Absolute itself to a mere bundle, or, 
if you prefer it, chemical combination, of "adjec- 
tives." We thus, it would seem, do not, even 
with regard to the Absolute, get out of the region 
of adjectivity, but at best into a higher and 
potentiated sphere of the adjectival. Now the 
question may very well arise whether out of 
the adjectival, anything but the adjectival can 
come, and whether Mr. Bradley is not deluding 
himself in thinking that out of what practically 
amounts to a sum-total of transmuted "adjec- 
tives " he is, properly speaking, getting any 
nearer the ultimate or the Absolute as such. 
What, on the foregoing assumption as to the 
Bradleyan position, is wanting, then, to the ulti- 
mateness of his formulation of the Absolute ? The 
recognition, I answer, of that bogey of the 
modern metaphysician, the basal ego, the ulti- 
mate subject. To prove the subject, the ego 
in an epistemological and metaphysical sense 
(as opposed to a psychological sense) to be a 
derivative construction is very easy, and in fact 
cheap. The reason is that, first of all, a con- 
fusion is made between the ultimate subject 
per se, that is, as the necessary presupposition 
of all conscious experience whatever, and the 
symbol that abstract or reflective thought con- 
structs to indicate this in its own terms. It is 
then, of course, easy, by means of the logical 



266 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

faculty functioning in reflective thought, to prove 
that the ego is its own creation, since its quasi- 
logical symbol, which alone directly enters into 
language, and, a fortiori, into philosophical 
formulations, undoubtedly is. Put, as I have had 
already occasion to point out on an earlier page, 
all the time that the philosopher is showing 
the fallacy or illegitimacy of the notion of ulti- 
mate subject, he is himself unawares presup- 
posing this ultimate subject in all his reasoning. 
The subject out of which all consciousness 
wells up — including that objectivity which is 
no more than the otherness of the subject itself 
— is in its first intention alogical. Hence it 
cannot be grasped by the (at once) unifying and 
differentiating logical, and the logical in its 
attempt to seize it retains only its simulacrum, 
to wit, the pseudo-concept which is indeed its 
own " derivative construction." It is au fond 
this ultimate principle, to which all else is 
" adjectival " — it is this ultimate principle that 
we imply, as already explained (see Chapter 
III.), when we speak of "being," when we 
postulate a substratum of qualities, in fact, when 
we find the adjective per se abstract, unreal, and 
meaningless. The reflective consciousness, with 
its concept of substance, in which concept logical 
analysis can find nothing but a bundle of attri- 
butes or " adjectives," unawares feels, so to say, 
into the concept this principle. Having dealt 
with the foregoing point as a preliminary step, 



PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 267 

we will now proceed to discuss certain problems 
arising out of the ordinary philosophical con- 
ception of the Absolute, which is shared by the 
latest modern writers on philosophy, e.g. in the 
English-speaking world by Messrs. Bradley, 
Royce, Taylor, &c. 

The assumption of the old Idealism of the 
right, the aggressively pallogistic Hegelianism, 
of which the late Professor T. H. xheabso- 
Green may be regarded, in his own lute as un- 
way and with certain modifications, as ^a?ityand 
the protagonist in this country, is that eomplete- 
the Absolute, the Idee, is something ness# 
finally and eternally complete, the durchsichtige 
Ruhe of Hegel. Such is the Absolute, regarded 
not in its at best partial manifestations in the 
processes of the real world, but under its highest 
and most perfect aspect as in and for itself. 
This view, in the special form it takes in the 
school in question, is naturally obnoxious to the 
criticism of Pallogism dealt with in an earlier 
portion of the present work. But others besides 
professional pallogists (e.g. Messrs. Bradley, 
Royce, Taylor, and Mactaggart) adopt some- 
thing very much like the same position. The 
Absolute also in their case is wound up and 
finished, so to say. It is rounded-off totality 
and completeness, with nothing outside itself, 
an ens realissimum, existing, but not becoming. 
Under whatever guise it appears the view in 
question is at basis pallogistic. It eliminates 



268 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

the alogical, i.e. the factor of which change is 
the essence. The impossibility of the notion of 
finality has already been discussed apropos of the 
world-te/iw {cf. pp. 206-210). But if a wound-up 
Absolute, which inevitably involves this elimi- 
nation of the alogical factor — and in this case 
also of the material and the potential in reality 
— is, when closely viewed, a hopeless postulate, 
it behoves us surely to reconsider our formu- 
lation of the Absolute altogether. A return to 
the inanities of the old Empiricism, for which 
the base word "absolute " is anathema, is impos- 
sible for most thinkers of the present day. But 
the recognition that the notion of the Absolute 
is implicitly given as a postulate in all con- 
sciousness does not necessarily mean the accept- 
ance of the formulation respecting it at present 
current in the philosophic world. The idea 
hitherto has been, it would seem, to envisage 
the Absolute as a concrete fact or thing, in 
which all other things are contained, in a trans- 
formed guise it may be, but none the less 
contained. Now, is this notion of an all-em- 
bracing concrete workable, or even thinkable ? 
Even if the objection raised above to Mr. 
Bradley's special formulation be obviated, even 
though we regard the Absolute as a supreme 
synthesis of experience, as unsurpassable ful- 
ness of consciousness centring in the ultimate 
subject, presupposed in our own and in every 
other limited consciousness, we have still the 



PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 269 

difficulties just now raised to contend with. 1 In 
addition, we are confronted with the unthinka- 
bility of an Absolute which is at once a totality 
and not a totality, in which at once all particulars 
have their being, and hence which embraces 
an infinitude and is nevertheless complete. 

It is to get rid of these and similar difficulties 
that Professor Royce puts forward his doctrine 
of ' " a self-representative system," supported by 
mathematical theories and illustrations derived 
from Dedekind. That for most of us these are 
unsatisfactory, I think I may say without fear 
of contradiction [cf. the note at the end of 
Chapter III.). The whole question, to my 
thinking, turns upon the distinction between 
regarding the Absolute as a wound-up whole, a 
closed system, a finally complete synthesis, and 
regarding it as principle merely, timeless prin- 
ciple of eternal change in time. If we adopt the 
latter view, we at once escape the contradictions 
and inconsistencies raised by the notion of the 
Absolute as system complete once and for all. 
The whole course of our investigations in the 
foregoing pages has tended to show the impos- 
sibility, nay, the inconceivability, of finality or 
completion in the world-order. We have seen 
that this notion is, in the last resort, identical 
with the fallacy that in theory-of-knowledge I 
have termed Pallogism. It involves the con- 

1 As above pointed out Mr. Bradley, as I read him, would not 
admit the Absolute in any sense as ultimate subject. 



270 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

tradiction of confounding what is really an 
abstraction with a real synthesis. It implies the 
conversion of an abstraction into a reality. 

Yet it may be said that our ultimate sanction, the 
self-consistency of consciousness, presses forward 
towards unity. It requires unity. It cannot rest 
satisfied with anything short of final unity, all- 
absorbing completeness. But surely it may be 
considered as arguable that the unity that seems 
demanded by the self-consistency of experience 
is no more than unity of principle and unity of 
direction. If we are content with this, we are 
relieved at once of the unthinkabilities and formal 
contradictions involved in the favourite theory of 
the actually complete Absolute. The bare fact 
of these contradictions would surely seem to in- 
dicate that we are on the wrong tack in seeking 
to achieve unity in this direction. We start 
with the assumption that the self-consistency of 
conscious experience demands the formulation 
of the Absolute as an all-embracing unity — as a 
totality. But yet no formulation in this sense 
has as yet been suggested that is not obnoxious 
to the most obvious criticism as involving fallacy 
at its very core. The moment you pose as your 
problem a formulation of the Absolute as com- 
pleteness, perfection, you have started on a road 
leading to a cul de sac. Be your formulation 
what it may, you are bound to admit with an 
apology its difficulties and general unsatisfactori- 
ness on certain points. You admit, in fact, 



PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 271 

generally speaking, that it is a pis aller. But 
yet, at the same time, your conviction is, whether 
you say so in so many words or not, that the 
self-consistency of experience demands some for- 
mulation of the kind you have attempted. Now 
this, I take it, is a delusion. That our test of 
truth, namely, the self-consistency of conscious- 
ness, demands unity, that it will not be satisfied 
with anything short of unity, is undoubtedly 
accurate. But (and here, I submit, lies the error) 
this is interpreted by most constructive thinkers 
of the present day to mean a unity in the sense 
of an eternally-actual experience, in which all 
things are gathered up and transmuted. Now, 
such an interpretation is surely by no means 
warranted by the original thesis. The unity, 
I would suggest, to which all experience points, 
is alogical rather than logical, material rather 
than formal, potential rather than actual. Its 
ultimate principle we must surely find in the 
subject presupposed in all consciousness and in 
a secondary degree in the this-ness of immediate 
apprehension. For the latter, being analysed, 
discloses itself as consisting of the subject of 
consciousness, of the object that is no more than 
the other-ness of the subject, i.e. itself under 
another aspect, and of the reciprocal relation 
between them called thought. Its ultimate end 
we may as surely find in perfection (if you will) — 
perfection in its three kinds, of truth, beauty, and 
goodness — but a perfection, a harmony, that is 



272 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

eternally changing in such wise that, although 
every concrete ideal in which it presents itself is 
attainable, yet once attained the ultimate perfec- 
tion is seen to lie beyond it. On this view the 
higher meaning of reality is to be found wholly 
and solely in the unhindered process of this 
eternal tendency — in a word, in the potentiality 
of self-realisation eternally inherent in the world- 
principle. 

As it seems to me this is perhaps the crucial 
problem of constructive metaphysic in the im- 
mediate future, whether we are to envisage the 
Absolute as a definite wound-up sum-total of all 
reality, transmuted or otherwise, or are to think 
of it as an eternally completing, yet never com- 
plete, process of the self-realisation of the subject 
of our consciousness and of all possible conscious- 
ness. Here we have the true issue. If we 
regard the Absolute in any form or shape as a 
completed synthesis or system of experience, look 
at it as we may and safeguard its formulation by 
waver-clauses as we will, we are, nevertheless, 
confronted with a basal duality between my con- 
sciousness here and now as individual, and the 
absolute consciousness into which it is supposed 
to enter, in some sense at least, in the relation of 
part to whole or of element to concrete. Such 
an eternally complete Absolute, turn the matter 
how we will, must necessarily mean a somewhat 
over against my consciousness here and now. 

Hence the assumption in question, whatever 



PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 273 

attempts at verbal accommodation may be made 
by its advocates, while professing to be a satis- 
factory and ultimate postulate, leaves us in pres- 
ence of an unresolved opposition. 

Let us suppose, on the contrary, that we re- 
nounce the attempt to arrive at any conception 
of the Absolute, involving completeness, per- 
fection, in other words, of the absolute as a 
wound-up finished system, and are content with 
the postulation of it as principle merely, treating 
completeness, perfection, all-embracing harmony, 
&c, as for us naught but asymptotic tendencies, 
potencies of the alogical principle at the centre 
of all experience working through the infinity 
of apperceptive syntheses involved therein. In 
this case, we are at once rid of the difficulties that 
confronted us on the former assumption. While 
holding fast to the principle, to the recognition 
of which as ultimate postulate the self-consistency 
of our consciousness forces us, we nevertheless 
acknowledge the unworkability of any attempt 
to formulate this same principle as actualised 
reality. We recognise it none the less as a 
problem, but our attitude towards it remains 
essentially " agnostic," to use the well-worn term. 
Its solution in the formulae of reflective thought 
would seem unattainable, and unattainable owing 
to the very conditions of that thought. Hence 
for philosophy it remains formulable as problem 
merely. In saying this we neither affirm nor 
deny the possibility of its solution in terms of 

s 



274 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

the aesthetic or even the ethical consciousness. 
As practical postulate the conviction of the 
realisation as a concrete unity of completeness, 
perfection, harmony, may affirm itself in what 
shape it may. We are content here merely to 
maintain its invalidity, viewed either as postulate 
or result of philosophical analysis. 

For philosophy, at least, the Absolute, so far 
from being the unchangeable eternal, is, on the 
contrary, the eternal principle of change. It is 
eternally realising itself under ever new forms 
to which we can assign no finality. Viewed, if 
we will, time apart, sub specie eternitatis, then it 
is surely, so far as metaphysical analysis is 
concerned, a bare principle and no more. But 
this question as to the ultimateness of time, as 
to the validity of the introduction of time-con- 
siderations into the deeper problems of meta- 
physic, constitutes a problem in itself. 

This problem confronts us on the very thres- 
hold of a thoroughgoing metaphysical analysis. 
Theulti- ^ s duration a basal condition of con- 
mateness sciousness per se or is it merely a 
of time. condition of our consciousness as 
individuals ? That the ultimate principle of 
conscious experience is presupposed by time, 
and cannot be regarded per se as itself involved 
in time, is clear. It is likewise clear that time 
is a root-form of the individual consciousness. 
The difficulty arises when we attempt to de- 
termine the limits within which we are justified 



PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 275 

in importing considerations involving time into 
the ultimate problem of metaphysic. It is quite 
true that we can envisage nothing except under 
the form of duration with its present eternally- 
severing a past and a future. We cannot 
conceive any one of the dimensions of time as 
isolated from the rest. An eternal "now" un- 
related to a past or future moment is the 
thinnest of all abstractions — a mere poetic phrase 
in fact. On the other hand, a past or a future 
out of all relation to the " now " involved in 
the immediacy of consciousness would be, if 
anything, still more vapid. The problem re- 
mains, then, whether we are to regard time as 
exclusively pertaining to the particularity of our 
consciousness, to its limitation as focussed in the 
finite individual, or whether we are justified, 
and if so, how far and in what sense, in imput- 
ing to it an absolute value. This question is 
answered differently by different thinkers. For 
M. Jaures time and space are both direct at- 
tributes of the Absolute ; for Mr. Bradley they 
are alike mere " appearance " belonging to the 
limitations of our consciousness in its particu- 
larity. It is not within the scope of our present 
intentions to offer any solution of this difficult 
question ; it suffices for our present purpose to 
state it. 

The notion of an unchanging finished Ab- 
solute is at the root of what is known as 
philosophical Theism. But before considering 



276 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

this it is necessary to say a few words on Theism, 
Atheism, and Agnosticism as popularly under- 
The stood. Popular Theism postulates a 

theistie personality, an individual conscious- 

popula?' ness ' with at least its intellectual 
andphilo- and conative sides, if not its sensory 
sophie. s j^ e# This supreme individual, in- 
finitely surpassing ourselves in degree if not 
altogether differing in kind, is assumed, in the 
manner of Aristotle's " First Mover," as the 
Originator or Creator of the world and all things 
that are therein, including the innumerable finite 
centres of consciousness represented by human, 
and possibly in a lesser degree by animal, in- 
telligences. The former, at least, are made after 
the pattern of himself as the supreme individual 
intelligence — "after his own image." The 
above, I think, is a fair description of " God " 
as conceived by the average man. The atheist, 
on the contrary, is supposed to profess to be able 
to bring forward a demonstration of the non- 
existence of the aforesaid individual Creator and 
Provider of all things. The agnostic, again- 
wise man that he is — whilst vehemently repudi- 
ating the folly and intellectual perversity of the 
above-described atheist, proclaims the path of 
wisdom as regards this theistie problem to lie 
in an equipoise of mere nescience. Now the 
agnostic I will not deny to be a real character ; 
but as regards the atheist who believes that 
he can furnish a conclusive demonstration of the 



PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 277 

non-existence of God as above denned I am 
inclined to doubt his reality, and would go so 
far as to deny positively the existence of any 
considerable section of persons coming within 
that category. This is not where the line of 
demarcation between the theist and the true 
atheist obtains. 

The distinction between the atheist and the 
agnostic as regards their mere intellectual position 
is purely academical and of no practical interest 
or bearing whatsoever. The dogmatic atheist, it 
is said, alleges that he can afford positive demon- 
stration of the non-existence of a divine person- 
ality as conceived of by the ordinary theist. The 
agnostic repudiates the dogmatic atheist's proofs 
of the negative proposition, but affirms equally 
stoutly the invalidity of all attempted proofs of the 
affirmative — nay, in many cases would even deny 
the possibility of such proofs. But the demon- 
stration of the non-existence of a fact and the 
demonstration, not of its non-existence, but of 
the absence of all grounds for believing in its 
existence, leaves us, from a practical point of 
view, in exactly the same position. The scientist 
can prove to me that basilisks do not exist, being 
contrary to the laws of Nature. He can also 
prove to me that thunderbolts or meteoric stones 
do exist and sometimes fall. But, whilst not 
impossible, there is no reason whatever for be- 
lieving that an aerolite is likely to descend upon 
the south-western district of London this even- 



278 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

ing. There is, therefore, a theoretical distinction 
between the two cases — the one is impossible ; 
the other is possible. But if I am contemplating 
a walk across Clapham Common the danger of 
being struck on the head by an aerolite — a pos- 
sible occurrence — and the danger of being 
scorched by a basilisk — an impossible one — 
are, so far as the purpose of my walk is con- 
cerned, that is, for practical purposes, precisely 
on the same level. In the same way, quoad the 
purposes of human life and conduct, the dis- 
tinction between the position of the assumed 
dogmatic atheist and that of the agnostic is of 
no importance whatever. 

The real, the vital difference between the point 
of view of the theist and that of the atheist lies 
not in any theoretical equivoque, but in the prac- 
tical, that is, the ethical, sphere. The theist, 
in contemplating the evil and pain of the world, 
and their apparent incompatibility with the high 
ethical attributes he ascribes to the personality of 
its alleged author, is satisfactorily consoled by the 
reflection that, to use a well-known phrase, " it 
will all come out in the washing." He is con- 
vinced that, whilst his God has created or per- 
mitted this evil, it is all part of a scheme of 
ulterior good, and that its creation or toleration 
is justified by the benevolent end in view. The 
atheist, on the contrary, finds insuperable diffi- 
culties in accepting this position. Granting, he 
says, the existence of your Supreme Being, the 



PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 279 

mere fact of the presence of evil, misery, and 
pain in the world is incompatible with the moral 
attributes, if we use the word "moral" in any 
intelligible sense, of the Creator and Orderer of 
such a world. " The evil is there," says the 
atheist ; " you cannot get away from the fact." 
No amount of specious confidence-trick assur- 
ances of mysterious " divine purposes " behind it 
will divest it of its character as evil. " The appli- 
cation to the Deity of the theory that the end 
justifies the means," continues the atheist, " I 
cannot in any way accept. I will not press the 
point as to the omnipotence of your personal 
God, since I am aware that many theologians of 
the present day do not insist upon it ; but in any 
case the power you attribute to Him must be 
transcendently greater than that at the disposition 
of our finite wills. Yet, necessary though it may 
be in human affairs not altogether to exclude the 
admission of the means justifying the end, it is 
well known that the moralist always does this 
with reluctance in any given case and with the 
greatest reservations as a general principle. But 
if I only admit the principle in question with 
reluctance as a concession to the weakness of 
human powers acting in a limited time, how incon- 
ceivably less is the excuse for a Divine Being 
whose powers, if not amounting to actual omni- 
potence, must nevertheless, as compared with 
human powers, be hardly distinguishable there- 
from, and who works not in a limited time, but 



2 8o THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

has eternity to play with ! Such a Being, who 
erects the principle of the means justifying the 
end into an integral element of His world-order, 
I cannot regard as moral in any sense to which I 
can attach the word, and hence I cannot worship 
such a Being." The true atheist, the ethical 
atheist, who insists that the theist's assumption 
of a personal Deity, even if granted as regards 
the question of bare existence, is worthless for 
religious purposes, owing to its incompatibility 
with ethical principle, might also be described 
with equal accuracy as an anti-theist. 

But it may be objected that in an earlier chapter 
we have ourselves expressly insisted on the cor- 
relative nature of good and evil in the ethical 
universe and of truth and error in the scientific 
and philosophical universe. The atheist's criticism 
of Theism from the ethical standpoint might, there- 
fore, seem to be inconsistent with this principle of 
antithesis. This is, however, not quite the case. 
Evil may be considered as the mere other-ness, 
the negative side, of good. Such evil is evil in 
the abstract, but there is also evil as concrete, 
evil as embodied in the particular evil thing. The 
satiation, the ennui, that pleasure engenders is 
the negative side, the other-ness of pleasure-in- 
general. But a positive disease or discomfort, a 
fever or toothache, has no inherent metaphysical 
necessity attaching to it, nor is it, like the former, 
deducible from such. As a particularised real it 
has a positive and independent character of its 



PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 281 

own. Such positive concrete evils may be dedu- 

cible from the physical constitution of the world, 

but they have no metaphysical significance. As 

matters of fact they are actual but not necessary 

in this sense, and even the granting of a general 

physical necessity does not improve the case for 

the theist's contention. "It must needs be that 

offences come, but woe unto him by whom they 

come ! 

The difficulty involved in the foregoing problem 

arises from the fact that the moment we envisage 

the world as in any sense the outcome _ „ „. 

u j r 1 mi r ••,• Source and 

or the product 01 the will 01 an indi- solution of 

vidual consciousness, hedge the notion the diffl- 
round with whatever qualifications we 
may, we are within the sphere of ethical judgment, 
within the jurisdiction of the human conscience. 
But the decisions of the human conscience are 
very definite in character. The ethical court of 
appeal claims that its judgments shall extend to, 
and be respected by, all that wears the aspect of 
personality, by all that is individual conscious- 
ness, no matter what the difference may be, quan- 
titatively or qualitatively, in the content or range 
of such individual consciousness. Hence the 
unsatisfactory character, admitted by straight- 
forward advocates of Theism themselves, of the 
attempts made to evade or attenuate the dis- 
tinctive dictates of the moral consciousness con- 
cerning the responsibility accruing to any Author 
and Regulator of the world for the evil that obtains 



282 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

within it. Once, however, we are outside the 
region of personality, of conscious will, we are 
outside the jurisdiction of the moral consciousness. 
An immanent trieb or nisus towards realisation — 
a subject, if you will, not clothed in personality — 
is outside the sphere of moral predication. For 
such subject, viewed as the root principle of all 
that is, at once the ultimate terminus a quo and 
terminus ad quern of all conscious process, the 
moral consciousness is simply a phase or aspect 
of the realisation itself. Hence from this point 
of view there is no moral problem in the exist- 
ence of the world at all. So long as we confine 
ourselves to it we are outside the jurisdiction of 
the moral consciousness, which always presup- 
poses the distinction of " I " and " thou " ; in other 
words, a relation between one self-conscious per- 
sonality and another, or between such personality 
and a corporate social entity. Abolish this dis- 
tinction of personality, eliminate the element of 
individual consciousness and will, and you abolish 
at once the moral problem. Just as the speculative 
difficulties attending the assumption of a finished 
Absolute, which involves, as we have shown, the 
ascription, in some sort at least, of personality to 
the Absolute, are got rid of by confining our 
assumption to a unity of tendency and direction 
merely, so here the moral difficulties attached to 
the former view are eliminated by a like pro- 
cedure. A parallel line of argument as regards 
the aesthetic sphere, the perfect ideal of beauty, 



PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 283 

conceived as eternally realised in the " Beatific 
Vision," rests also on the assumption of a personi- 
fication of the world-principle, and is, therefore, 
incompatible with the concrete ugliness of the 
world conceived as the product of a conscious 
will, whose essence involves aesthetic perfection. 
When, however, we abandon the position of the 
eternally complete, self-realised Absolute, and take 
our stand, not on an absolute self-realised unity 
but on a self -realising unity of simple tendency 
and direction, the problem which is the source of 
our difficulty has lost all meaning and disappears. 
There is yet another problem which, although 
not strictly speaking metaphysical in the sense 
of the foregoing, yet nevertheless fills 
a large space in the popular philo- physical 
sophy of the present day. It is that par-allel- 
expressed in the theories known on 
the one hand as Psycho- Physical Parallelism and 
on the other as the infuxus psychicus. How 
shall we envisage the dual aspect of phenomena ? 
The real world presents itself as a double series 
of phenomena — a physical series and a psychical 
series. Can we apply the category of causation 
to both these series alike, and especially can 
we apply it as between the two series ? Can 
we treat the physical as a cause of the psychical 
or vice versa, or are we to regard the two as 
a double series, each with a line of causation 
strictly independent of the other ; or yet again 
must we confine the category of causation to 



284 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

the physical series alone, treating the psychical 
as outside causation altogether ? As regards 
this problem there is, first of all, the position 
of the older Materialism, according to which 
the psychical is, strictly speaking, caused by the 
physical, is a mere epiphenomenon of the physi- 
cal. This position, which involves metaphysical 
absurdity, the position of the French Materialism 
of the eighteenth century, and in the main of 
Vogt, Blichner, and Moleschott, of the mid- 
nineteenth century, is now practically abandoned 
by all serious scientific thinkers as much as by 
speculative philosophers. 

The theory of Physical Parallelism in its usual 
form, as stated, for example, by Fechner, postu- 
lates a double causal series not causally inter- 
active but corresponding strictly in the result 
at every stage. This theory, of course, is prac- 
tically a resuscitation of one of the sides of 
Spinoza's system. The causal line of each series 
is postulated as in itself absolutely independent 
of that of the other, notwithstanding its precise 
and invariable correspondence. Hence the phy- 
sical effect apparently resulting from a psychical 
cause — an emotion followed by an act of will 
having as its apparent outcome a modification 
of the physical world — is really not due to the 
emotion or the velleity as psychical phenomena, 
but to the liberation of nerve energy which is 
their physical accompaniment. The emotion and 
the velleity followed by the bodily movement 



PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 285 

cannot be regarded as a case of cause and 
effect in the strict sense of the word. Similarly 
in the psychical life there is a continuity of 
cause and effect through the series of psychic 
states and activities. As Spinoza insisted, ideas 
can only be determined causally by ideas, just 
as motions in space can only be determined by 
motions in space. There is no passing over 
causally from the one side to the other. This 
doctrine has been attacked from various points. 
The difficulty has been pointed out of tracing, 
even with the most liberal aid of the hypothesis 
of sub-conscious and unconscious states, any satis- 
factory continuity on the psychical side. Hence 
it has been urged that the category of causa- 
tion in strictness only applies to the physical 
side of phenomenal reality. Again the doctrine 
of Psycho-Physical Parallelism has been criticised 
in a destructive sense in the interests of the 
influxus psychicus by various philosophic writers, 
in this country notably by Professor James Ward. 
While to have omitted all mention of the pro- 
blem of which Psycho-Physical Parallelism is one 
of the most popular solutions might have seemed 
unjustifiable, nevertheless, any detailed examina- 
tion of the problem and of the current hypotheses 
respecting it, with the elaborate physiological and 
psychological discussions therein involved, would 
lie outside the range of the present work. Speak- 
ing generally, and in this matter rather as a 
layman, the present writer cannot but regard 



286 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

the theory of Psycho- Physical Parallelism with 
all its difficulties and apparent insufficiencies, as 
notwithstanding less unsatisfactory, viewed as a 
working hypothesis, than any contra doctrine as 
yet put forward as a solution. That it is vulner- 
able to the shafts of criticism at many points 
is undeniable, but whether these weak spots are 
fatal to the theory as a whole, in whatever way 
it may be formulated, is by no means so certain. 
In any case, since the need for envisaging the 
real world from this point of view in some way 
or other is an urgent one to the speculative 
man, we should hardly be justified in completely 
throwing overboard an hypothesis, which proves 
serviceable in so many directions, for anything 
less than a demonstration of its complete untena- 
bility on the one hand, or on the other, the 
establishment of a counter-theory more satis- 
factory to our speculative intelligence and more 
serviceable in the working out of psycho-physical 
results. 



IX 

SURVEY OF RESULTS 

The foregoing pages make no pretensions to 
embody a new system of philosophy, even in 
outline. None the less, the analysis we have 
undertaken of the roots of reality has had for 
its object to furnish results that might serve 
as stepping-stones to be utilised in the building 
up, when the time is ripe, of such a new philo- 
sophic reconstruction. In this chapter we pro- 
pose to survey as concisely as possible these 
general results themselves, and thus aid the 
reader to understand their inter-connection in 
a way that was not so easy to effect in the 
course of the analysis itself. 

We started with the endeavour to discover 
certain ultimate postulates, constituting, so to say, 
the residual certainties arrived at by philosophic 
thought up to the present time. The ultimate 
test of certainty or of truth we have defined as 
the complete self-consistency of consciousness, 
which is shown in its application when the mere 

adequate apprehension of a problem carries with 

287 



288 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

it irresistible assent to the solution offered. 1 We 
found, firstly, an absolutely unassailable principle 
at the basis of what is known as Modern Idealism, 
namely, that conscious experience, possible or 
actual, embraces all that is or can be ; that the 
postulation of existence independent of conscious- 
ness is meaningless, being in fact a self-contra- 
dictory absurdity. 2 This, the postulate of Modern 
Idealism, is really the foundation of all the great 
constructive systems of metaphysic from Plato 
downward. Whether explicitly recognised or 
not, it is the assumption underlying all those 
systems that have attempted to offer a solution 

1 As illustration of what is said in the text, I may refer to the 
statement of G. H. Lewes to the effect that a friend of his alleged 
that he could conceive that causation might not obtain in the 
moon, in other words, that an uncaused event might occur in 
some, to him unknown, part of the spacial universe. Lewes, as a 
good empiricist, naturally quoted this as an argument against the 
a priori nature of the category of causation. The real state of 
the case, of course, was that Lewes's friend did not really appre- 
hend the problem at all. Similarly I, myself, can remember, as 
a small boy, calling in question the geometric truism that two 
straight lines could not enclose a space, and for a precisely 
similar reason. I had not seized the meaning of the axiom. 
The moment these propositions are truly understood the assent 
to them is irresistible, or, as we might say, automatic. 

2 The recent so-called refutations of Idealism amount, generally, 
to its refutation only in the sense of what I have termed in this 
book Pallogism. This is notably the case with Mr. G. E. Moore's 
" Refutation of Idealism," which appeared in Mind {vol. xii. p. 143 
sqq.), as was, in fact, pointed out by another writer, Mr. C. A. Strong, 
who criticised it in a subsequent number of the same periodical 
(vol. xiv. p. 174 sqq.). Such would-be refuters of Idealism are fond 
of emphasising the distinction between the actual this-ness of 
consciousness and its material contetit, which appears in the 
concrete conscious synthesis as its other-?iess. The latter is, of 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 289 

of the larger problem of existence. Starting, 
then, from this basis, we next sought to discover 
the ultimate nature of conscious experience. 
Analysis disclosed to us that consciousness-in- 
general, no less than any given determination 
of consciousness as particular object, consists 
ultimately of a synthesis of two elements or 
terms in a reciprocal relation. * We found further 
that this relation, constituting a synthetic unity 
of these two elements, is not, as Hegel would 
have it, a relation in vacuo, a bridge without 
ends {cf. Bradley, " Appearance and Reality "), but 
that it always presupposes these elements. It 
is, in other words, not independent, but is 

course, only the Fichtean Anstoss in another guise. But no 
amount of emphasis, either on the distinction between the con- 
cept and the sensible impression — "the permanent possibility of 
sensation" — nor on*that between the immediacy or this-ness of 
apprehension and the potentiality of the content, will carry us 
a step towards "refuting" that Idealism that proclaims conscious- 
ness-in-general, possible and actual, for the final and most com- 
prehensive term to which reality can be reduced. A distinction 
is sometimes made between the epistemological assertion that 
we know nothing but "conscious states" and the metaphysical 
assertion, as it is termed, that the external world exists merely 
as modifications of consciousness. When closely viewed this 
objection will be seen to be invalid, and this for the simple reason 
that, Idealism once admitted as epistemological postulate, the 
attempt to rehabilitate realism as a bare metaphysical possibility 
is meaningless. That which, if admitted at all, is ex hypothesi 
incapable of entering into any possible experience clearly cannot 
exist for any system of possible experience. It is for such a 
system a nonentity. If its existence cannot be shown to be 
involved in the self-consistency of consciousness, it is nothing 
at all. The assertion of the bare possibility is merely formal 
and illusory. It has no real validity. 

T 



2 9 o THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

always the relation of its terms. The primordial 
synthesis of consciousness-in-general, which is 
presupposed in all particular consciousness, 
we have found to consist in (i) a that which 
feels ; (2) a somewhat felt, and (3) the reciprocal 
relation termed thought, the reaction of the 
former on the latter, and vice versa. Treating 
the interaction of the two basic elements in this 
primordial synthesis as itself an element, we 
find that the analysis of consciousness gives 
us in the last resort three elements. But 
if we examine the matter more nearly, we 
further find that they resolve themselves into 
the first element mentioned, namely, into the 
that which feels, or the ego which becomes 
conscious. For the second element, the some- 
what felt, is seen to be no more than the 
projection or inversion of the feeling ego. It 
has no meaning save as a determination of a 
conscious subject. 1 

Taking consciousness in its primary synthesis, 
as above disclosed, we can distinguish clearly 
the first two elements from the third, the terms 
related from the relation — feeling, sensating, im- 

1 In the course of the foregoing discussion the objections raised 
by modern thinkers to the recognition of a primary ego or subject 
have been answered, especially Mr. Bradley's contention, that the 
ego is a subsequent construction within consciousness, has been 
indicated as resting on a hysteron -proteron. He is confoundingj 
as we maintain, the ego in its " second intention," as concept, with 
the ego as primary datum. The ego as philosophic concept may 
be even a very late construction, but this does not alter the fact 
that all consciousness presupposes ego in the former sense. 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 291 

mediacy, from the thought, the essence of which 
is relation pure and simple. In this way we 
arrived at the antithesis of alogical and logical 
as at once the deepest and most wide-reaching 
antithesis in conscious experience. This anti- 
thesis, it is necessary to bear in mind, in no 
sense amounts to a dualism as implying mutual 
independence of its terms. It is an antithesis 
within the synthetic unity of conscious experi- 
ence itself. The very relating activity, the 
outcome of which is the thought-form, is the 
activity of the subject of consciousness itself, 
while it is only relatively and not absolutely 
distinct from the discrimination of agreement 
and difference within the region of feltness or 
of objective sensation {cf. pp. 263-264). 

This antithesis of alogical and logical, having 
its ground in the elements at the root of all 
consciousness, can be traced through- 
out the whole system of experience, and 
i.e. in every phase of reality. We logical as 
have been able to distinguish four |n°i^ es i St 
main modes in which the antithesis 
manifests itself, namely, the particular and uni- 
versal, being and appearance, infinite and finite, 
and chance and law. There are countless minor 
antitheses, but these are either deducible from 
one or other of the above four pairs, or, if not, 
from some sort of cross-union between two or 
more of them. We have found that the par- 
ticular itself has an intensive or qualitative and 



292 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

an extensive or quantitative character. As in- 
tensive, particularity is identical with the this- 
ness of intuition — with the absolute self-centred 
uniqueness of the content of any given moment 
of actual consciousness. The this-ness or self- 
centredness of the particular, in this qualitative 
aspect, is absolute per se and knows no limit. 
The particular, as "this thing," seems as if it 
could never shrink into itself enough — so absolute 
is its uniqueness. But there is another aspect 
of particularity, that is, its aspect as infinite 
repetition in time and space. Thus, in this 
sense, the time-honoured antithesis of the one 
and the many is itself contained within the mode 
of the alogical termed particularity. This second 
or quantitative character of the particular already 
touches the antithetic mode, namely, the uni- 
versal. Just as the particular is through and 
through alogical, so the universal is through 
and through logical. The logical universal em- 
braces three forms, the class-name, the abstract 
quality, and the relation pure and simple. The 
universal as class-name, while descending in 
countless gradations, never reaches the concrete, 
for the simple reason that however it may 
come down towards the concrete it always 
remains universal and hence abstract ; it never 
touches the particular. The second form of the 
logical universal quality per se, is quite obviously 
an abstraction — in fact, in some respects the type 
of abstraction. The third form, the relation- 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 293 

universal, is the basis of those concept-forms 
termed categories in the technical sense, as enter- 
ing into the construction of sensible experience 
itself, the Kantian and Hegelian categories, &c. 

The second modal antithesis of the alogical 
and logical referred to, namely, that of being and 
appearance, so important for speculative thought, 
is the subject of much confusion in philosophy 
The word " being" is sometimes used as synony- 
mous with reality and sometimes not. I have 
defined "being," in the sense in which I use the 
word, as meaning merely the that in the object 
in contradistinction to the what. The that in 
the object is alogical ; the what involves some 
form of relation. Hence I distinguish between 
being and existence. The term existence, by 
which I understand the synthesis of being and 
appearance, is therefore equivalent to the term 
reality. Being, I have pointed out, when 
analysed means subjectivity. Thus, when we 
say that a thing is, when we use the verb- 
substantive not merely as the grammatical copula 
but as affirming being of an object, we thereby 
impute the principle of subjectivity to this object 
— that is, we impute thereto an ego-noumenon. 
This is interesting in its bearing on the 
Materialism of modern science, which would 
attribute a "subjective side" to all matter. 
The reference in this connection to physical 
substance as "blind unconscious matter" opens 
up a further point of interest to the philosophic 



294 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

thinker, namely, the distinction between the un- 
conscious and the extra-conscious. Conscious- 
ness and unconsciousness in this connection are 
both within the realm of subjectivity, that is, of 
possible consciousness. In so far as we postulate 
being of a stone, we assume the possibility of 
consciousness as inherent in the stone ; in other 
words, although we may assume the stone to be 
^^-conscious, we do not assume it to be extra- 
conscious. An abstraction alone is extra-conscious 
in this sense. Justice, beauty, weight, height, 
ideal mathematical constructions have no subjec- 
tivity imputed to them. They have no being ; 
they are conceived of 2&per se extra-conscious. 

The third mode of the alogical and logical 
is represented by the antithetic elements of 
infinite and finite. Infinity always falls to the 
side of the alogical. I am aware, of course, 
of the distinction drawn between the " true " and 
the "false" infinite, the former being applied from 
Plato downwards, to the universal concept, the 
latter to the manifold of sense. But, if closely 
viewed, the infinity attributed to the logical 
universal, whether hypostatised as the Platonic 
idea or otherwise, will be found to fall, strictly 
speaking, not to the logical concept itself, but 
to the " limitless repetition of instances " that it 
covers. This means, of course, that it properly 
falls to the particular. The logical universal, 
as such, is necessarily a formal principle of 
limitation, i.e. of finitude. It is ^^notation, not 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 295 

annotation, to use the old logical expressions. 
It ^eludes, by the very fact of its deluding. 
Hence it is clearly per se, not infinite, and 
infinity can only be predicated of the potentiality 
of instances falling under it. I am also not 
unaware of Professor Royce's theory of the 
infinity of a " self- representative system," as 
based upon the number-series, of Dedekind's 
" Kette," &c. But I am unable, after careful 
perusal of Royce's argument as stated in 
" The World and the Individual " (vol. i. Ap- 
pendix), to see that he makes out his case for 
regarding his so-called self-representative system 
as anything else than a special instance of the 
potential repetition to infinity of quantitative 
particularity (cf. supra, chapter iii., note on 
Infinity, at end). I contend for the acceptance 
of the word infinite as far as possible in 
accordance with current usage, that is, as 
infinite repetition in time, space, or both. 

The most popular and sensational of the four 
chief pairs of modes into which the cardinal 
antithesis of alogical and logical falls is that of 
chance and law. This is, perhaps, the solitary 
instance in which the theory of Pallogism has 
entered into popular thought. We constantly 
hear j the pseudo - philosophic dictum from the 
"half-baked" man of culture, or even from the 
" man - in - the - street," that there is no such 
thing as chance in the world, the term chance 
merely being a word denoting our ignorance. 



296 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

It is unnecessary here to repeat the detailed 
discussion, in which I have shown the fallacy of 
this point of view (see pp. 78-94). Suffice it 
to say that the theory in question would elimi- 
nate the whole material element in the processes 
of the real world, with all that it contributes to 
the total result, and reduce that result to the 
expression of a formal abstraction. The reality 
and life of the changing world would be con- 
verted into a barren abstract formula for an 
applied category. 

Let us now turn for a moment to the most 
popular and historically important form of the 

opposite fallacy to that which we 
Assoeia- have just been considering. The 
tional doctrine known as "Empiricism" or 

psycho- (i Associationalism " has at the present 

time so few defenders within the inner 
circles of philosophical thinkers that the attempt 
to criticise it may seem to many like flogging 
a dead horse. But, if dead within the inner 
circles of philosophy, it is by no means quite 
dead in the thought of "the average cultured 
man." It still, consciously or unconsciously, 
influences his judgments in matters bearing on 
philosophy and pervades much of the popular 
literature of the day in such matters. It may, 
therefore, be as well to point out once more, 
in relation to the positions forming the basis 
of the present work, the fundamental fallacy 
underlying the associational standpoint. The 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 297 

associational psychologists or empirical philo- 
sophers, according as we may choose to call 
them, 1 postulate, under one formula or another, 
that the external perception is a positive given 
somewhat, accruing to the individual mind from 
without, apart from the co-operation of any con- 
scious activity. Their cardinal distinction is 
between the perceived object and the mental 
concept, based on the scholastic formula, Nihil 
est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu fuerit. 
Their position was therefore au fond, that 
of Dualism. The " impressions and ideas " of 
Hume were interpreted in the sense of per- 
ceptions and notions. The first were the source 
of truth, science, and intellectual soundness ; the 
second of error, metaphysics, and intellectual 
rottenness. The notions of the mind were 
compounded of the memory and association of 
external perceptions. The external sense — per- 
ception — was the solid, true, and real particular ; 
the mental concept was the false, fleeting, and 
illusory universal. But the empiricist did not 
see, in making the foregoing assumption, that 
the sense-perception, constituting the external 
object for him, was itself neither a simple 
particular nor a simple sense-impression, but 

1 It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that this school 
claims descent from Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, through Reid and 
the Scottish school, and has been represented in recent times by 
Mill and his nominal opponent, Hamilton, by Bain, Lewes, and 
also, in the main, by Herbert Spencer, Taine, Comte, and epigoni 
too numerous to mention, of the mid- Victorian era. 



29S THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

a synthesis of particular and universal, of sensa- 
tion and thought. The content of any external 
perception, this table, for instance, is not a mere 
sensation, not even a mere sensation of other- 
ness (Anstoss), but as completed object it in- 
volves a definite synthesis. The undifferentiated 
"bundle" of sensations at the basis of my per- 
ception of this table have to be subsumed under 
certain apperceptive syntheses or categories, e.g. 
the relation of substance-accident, existence in 
space, relationship to and differentiated from 
other objects, possible or actual, in the same 
space, &c, before the table is constituted for 
consciousness as perceived object. When once 
this is recognised, it becomes evident that the 
elaborately-constructed house of cards, by which 
a mere law of empirical psychology is made to 
do duty for a theory of knowledge, falls to pieces 
at the touch of criticism. It is seen that the 
distinction, paraded with so much pomp and 
circumstance, between sense-object and mental 
concept has not, after all, quite that cardinal im- 
portance that the Associational school gives to it 
— that the sense-perception, as constituting object, 
already contains a thought-element, that it is no 
mere uncategorised sensation (sense-impression). 
It is similar with the distinction between 
particular and universal in this connection, by 
which the sense-perception is lauded as the 
safe and sane particular as against the vain 
and unreliable universal. Here also, of course, 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 299 

and on the same grounds, an accurate analysis 
shows the barest perception of the sense-object 
to be already a synthesis of particular and 
universal. These mid-Victorian empiricists re- 
present, in a manner, the antithetic counterpart 
to the pallogists of the orthodox Hegelian right 
and its offshoots. While the pallogist would 
resolve the real world into thought-universals, 
the empiricist would resolve it into sense-par- 
ticulars. In so doing they alike abolish the 
synthesis in which alone reality consists. The 
sense-particular per se in which the empiricist 
thinks he finds the only genuine reality (but 
does not), is, in truth, no more /reality, per se, 
than is the logical universal so much despised 
by him. The real, the object, necessarily implies 
a union in synthesis of both elements. The truth 
at the back of Empiricism is simply to be found 
in the confused recognition of the genetic priority 
of the alogical over the logical. But this element 
of truth in the empiricist's position the empiricist 
himself has succeeded in travestying beyond all 
recognition. The notion that sense without 
thought can furnish reality is not a whit less 
absurd than the notion against which the 
empiricist inveighs that thought without sense 
can furnish reality. He is further led into con- 
fusion and his whole statement vitiated, by his 
confining the notion of thought to the mental 
concept of reproductive thought, to the neglect 
of the thought-element in perception itself. 



300 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

When we use the word process in a philoso- 
phical connection, we do not necessarily mean a 
process involving a time-series, but an 
ofeo?- 111 y organic or systematic order of elements 
seious going to make up a definite synthesis. 

fpom eSS * n tn * s sense 1 nave pointed out that 
primary there is no break, no hiatus, in the 
synthesis system of articulations constituting the 
vidual conscious process. At each stage 

eonseious- we nnc j tne absoluteness of the 
alogical elements therein being sucked 
up and metamorphosed by the relativeness of 
thought -activity. We see that the individual 
consciousness, the personal ego or mind, presup- 
poses a process substantially identical with that 
which is proceeding on its own psychological 
plane, as being already complete, and, from its 
point of view, as it were ready-made. This con- 
sciousness which the individual mind presupposes, 
we may — if we do not fear the small wit of the 
Philistine — term a timeless transcendental pro- 
cess. Of this process, we have pointed out, the 
activity of the individual mind is but the con- 
tinuation. We have also further shown that we 
have no reason for assuming any finality in the 
order of the conscious process in the individual 
consciousness as we know it. 1 On the contrary, 

1 The complete synthesis spoken of, I may remind the reader, 
does not necessarily imply a finality, but may in its turn be looked 
upon as element in a more advanced synthesis. Its completeness 
may well be conceived as relative rather than as absolute. 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 301 

we have given grounds for thinking that, as 
realised in organic and psychical evolution in 
time, we may assume the possibility of a mode 
of consciousness whose "organ" should be a 
sociological or super-organic system based on 
the human individual as its unit, just as the 
human individual itself is based on the organic 
cell as its unit. 

In connection with the analysis of the individual 
consciousness, I have pointed out that self-identity 
simply means the unbroken continuity of a per- 
sonal memory-synthesis, and this again means the 
extension of the moment of immediacy, of thisness, 
in time. The word "self" or "personality" is 
very often used as meaning the character and 
disposition {i.e. the concrete sum of tendencies) 
as well as the particular experience - contents, 
associated with a given memory-synthesis. Thus, 
represented by the same human body, as their 
instrument, you may have various and even con- 
tradictory dispositions of character, or "selves," 
if we like to use this term for them. For example, 
the personality or self under strong emotion, or 
during insanity, or in drink, is different from the 
average self, and yet those varying selves are 
clearly bound up in the same memory-synthesis. 
More than this, if we trust the accuracy of results 
alleged to have been obtained by recent scientific 
investigators of hypnotism, it would seem that the 
same objective side, to wit, the human body, which 
we are accustomed to regard as representing one 



302 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

memory-synthesis to the exclusion of all others, 
may possibly, under exceptional conditions, do 
duty for more than one. However, this subject 
— for the present, at least — is in too inchoate a 
stage of elucidation to be fit for treatment as a 
part of general scientific psychology. 

The antitheses material and formal, potential 
and actual, are nearly, although not quite, coin- 
cident with the antithesis of alogical 
Material and i ogica i # The pallogist, just as he 

formal : hypostatises the logical at the expense 

anlf actual °^ t ^ ie a ^°gi ca ^ hypostatises the actual 
at the expense of the potential, and 
form at the expense of matter. 1 That he 
should do so is only to be expected, for the 
fallacy of abstraction which he commits is at 
basis the same in both cases. Yet the attempt 
to argue away one side of these antitheses 
would seem to be irresistible to even con- 
structive thinkers. I have shown in Chapter V. 
that the purely negative value that philosophers 
have been wont to ascribe to the first of the anti- 

1 In the course of our investigations we have had occasion to 
discuss the system of Pallogism generally, as embodied in the 
philosophy of Hegel, its greatest representative. It may be added 
here that the attempt sometimes made to show that Hegel was 
au fond not a pallogist by citing his remark that the "logic" 
was a " realm of shadows " is really no disproof of his Pallogism. 
Hegel said, in effect : " In the logic I only give you the skeleton 
of the system of reality — not that the filling-in of the picture, the 
flesh and blood of the skeleton, consists of something other than 
categories, consists of something essentially different from the 
skeleton ; it is only a continuation of the same process, the gene- 
ration of subordinate categories in an indefinite gradation." 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 303 

thetical terms in question is explained by their 
priority of value, metaphysically, for which reason 
the said terms are mainly expressible, in the 
language of reflective thought, and a fortiori in 
that of philosophy, by negatives. The philoso- 
phers in question cannot see that these negative- 
seeming terms connote a positive element — an 
element constituting the root and pre-supposition 
of the logical, the formal, and the actual. They 
are the warp which the "eternal loom of time" 
weaves into reality. To take an instance from 
the potential and the actual (Aristotle's antithesis, 
for most purposes identifiable with his other anti- 
thesis of matter and form). The actuality of any 
given moment of consciousness is the smallest 
part of the total content of that moment. As I 
write at the present time, what is actual to my 
consciousness is limited to the pigeon-holes of the 
writing-desk before me, but I a.m potentially con- 
scious of the whole room, nay, of a whole world 
outside. But for the practically infinite range of 
this potential consciousness the mere actuality of 
the pigeon-holes of the desk before me would 
have no significance. It is as the actual sign or 
phenomenon of a potentially objective real out- 
side themselves that they possess significance 
for me. The same with every moment of con- 
sciousness ; the actual side only possesses value 
or meaning as a token of the vast potentiality 
beyond itself. 

There are three chief senses in which the term 



304 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

reality is used. First of all, we have the ordinary 
empirical sense of the " man-in-the-street," that 

reality which is dominated by the 
and truth, common-sense consciousness and its 

categories. Secondly, we have the 
acceptation specially consecrated by Mr. Bradley 
in his " Appearance and Reality," although often 
employed before, namely, as the highest possible 
unfolding or perfection of the essence of a thing, 
or a fortiori of concrete consciousness throughout 
its entire range. The third sense of the word 
reality is that largely employed in this book, and 
is exclusively philosophical, namely, that of a 
synthesis of elements to constitute a unity other 
than themselves. Such a synthesis is, as I have 
repeatedly insisted upon in the present work, 
clearly not reducible to less than two antithetic 
terms without ceasing at once to be a synthesis, 
and therefore becoming a mere abstraction having 
no connection with reality. This, when stated in 
so many words, may seem a platitude, but, if it 
be so, there are few platitudes the insistence upon 
which is more necessary in view of the fallacies 
that its neglect has engendered. The synthesis 
of reality, viewed as a whole, either as a relative 
whole as any special reality, or as an absolute 
whole as conscious experience throughout its 
entire range, implies an articulated system of 
synthesis, each involving its own antithesis. The 
aim of philosophic analysis is to ascertain the 
ultimate and most comprehensive antithesis dis- 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 305 

coverable in conscious experience, a cardinal 
antithesis to which all other antitheses may be 
reduced. This we have found to be the anti- 
thesis of the alogical and logical. If our analysis 
be correct, it would appear that the category, 
using the word in its epistemological, i.e. Kantian 
and post-Kantian sense, as the thought-element 
involved in the reality of common-sense percep- 
tion, is itself derivative from antithetic elements 
more deep-lying than itself. For example, in 
Chapter III. we have shown that the salient cate- 
gory of cause and effect is itself one element of 
an antithesis of which chance is the other, and 
that this antithesis itself is but a mode of the 
antithesis of the alogical and logical that lies at 
the root of all consciousness. 

Pallogistic systems of theory-of-knowledge and 
metaphysic have ignored the alogical side of 
reality. Their authors have been led Transfor- 
by the fact that philosophy means a mation 
formulation in the terms of reflective aloffiealin 
thought, and by the fact that the reflective 
medium of reflective thought, as such, thou S^t. 
is necessarily the logical universal, into assum- 
ing that knowledge generally, and especially 
that purest form of knowledge represented by 
philosophic speculation, can never be concerned 
with aught but logical forms ; that the alogical 
(sensation, will, being, agency, thisness) must in- 
evitably be excluded from its domain. They 
ignore the fact that though the alogical, it is 

u 



306 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

true, cannot be expressed in the concepts of 
reflective thought, yet it can nevertheless be 
indicated in the concept-form. The true concept 
is the expression of a relation between terms, 
and though the terms themselves cannot be ex- 
pressed in the way the relation between them is 
expressed, yet they can undoubtedly be indicated 
conceptually in the form, as it were, of a symbol. 
This is the case whenever we think or speak of 
an abstract quality or sensation. The general 
terms used by abstract thought to express 
alogicals do not really express them at all, but 
merely indicate them. Unlike universals proper, 
they express nothing. The "universal" as class- 
name expresses definite relations amongst an 
assemblage of qualities. A category (in the 
Kantian sense), such as cause, expresses a pure 
relation per se. But when it comes to the 
ultimate termini of these relations, reflective 
thought, whose medium is necessarily the uni- 
versal thought-form or concept, can only get at 
them, so to speak, by means of a concept 
through which they are more or less arbitrarily 
symbolised. Reflective thought, however, can 
and does effect this, and hence the possibility 
of recognising the alogical in the pseudo-concept 
that represents it in reflection, and hence again 
the possibility of its inclusion in a philosophical 
formula. 

Reflective thought, as represented in its highest 
manifestation, as philosophy, is not the only form 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 307 

in which empirical consciousness becomes trans- 
lated, acquiring a higher value. In the art- 
consciousness we have this take place other 
under the form of sense - perception, values of 
with its standard of beauty, and in the reallt y- 
ethical consciousness under the forms of emotion, 
represented by social sympathy (human love), 
with its standard of goodness. In both these 
cases, no less than in the philosophical con- 
sciousness, with its standard of truth, alike the 
ultimate test and the ultimate goal is the same, 
namely, the self- consistency, the harmony, of 
consciousness-in-general with itself. In all three 
cases, moreover, the ultimate appeal is to im- 
mediacy, to feeling. It might be supposed at 
first sight that, whatever might be the case 
with aesthetic beauty or moral goodness, philo- 
sophical truth at least had logical reason for 
its final arbiter. Such is, however, not quite 
the case. If we consider the matter closely, 
we shall see that the conviction of the truth of 
a given philosophical formulation, or, in other 
words, the conviction of the adequacy of the 
formulation as expressing in the terms of abstract 
thought the self- consistency of consciousness, 
rests in the last resort upon feeling — namely, 
the feeling of intellectual satisfaction it affords. 
Hence here also, no less than in the sphere 
of art or ethics, we are forced back upon 
the bedrock of the alogical as our ultimate 
arbiter. 



308 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

The disengagement of the mere many-ness of 
the world from the essence of its reality is the 
main task of human culture, whether 
problem as philosophy, art, or ethics. 1 Quanti- 
of human tative particularity is the enemy against 
eu uie. wn ich the higher consciousness in all 
its forms is waging incessant warfare. This point 
has been dealt with in Chapter VI., as regards 
philosophy (including, of course, in this connec- 
tion, science), art, and ethics. In the same 
chapter we have dealt exhaustively with the 
question of the ultimacy of the alogical above 
alluded to. The very important fact of the 
unique thisness of the ultimate judgment in 
philosophical, aesthetic, and ethical matters, as 
opposed to the "commonness," the necessity of 
assent for all men, attaching to the judgments of 
the ordinary empirical consciousness, will also be 
found discussed in that chapter. As regards this, 
the " Pragmatists " would probably maintain that 
the distinction between the two orders of judg- 
ments was based upon practical sanction ; that 

1 It may be noticed here that I have given no special place to 
the so-called religious consciousness. I have not done so, since 
there is nothing in any form of the religious consciousness that 
cannot be reduced to a combination of factors derived from the 
aesthetic or ethical consciousness respectively. The values of 
these latter in their highest potency as referable to the telos of 
existence give us the whole content of the religious consciousness. 
The expression "religious consciousness" may be justifiable as 
denoting the highest potency above referred to, but this has fallen 
to be dealt with in its proper place, notably Chapter VII., although 
under other headings. 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 309 

the needs of existence up-to-date had produced 
the "object common to all," about which all 
men must be substantially agreed, and that this 
was not the case with the judgments of aesthetics 
or ethics, or at least not in the same degree. We 
have already discussed the validity of this point 
of view at the opening of Chapter VII., and so 
need not enter into it again here. 

We have seen that historically, from the period 
when civilisation began to break down the group- 
society of early man, the tendency has views as 
been towards what I term the mystical to world- 
ideal — towards conceiving the telos as destmy * 
a direct relation between the finite soul of the 
individual and the infinite world-consciousness. 
With early man, on the contrary, the supreme 
end presented itself in the form of a glorious life 
of clan, tribe, or people, conceived as a continuity 
of deified ancestors, existing tribesmen, and their 
descendants. In the thought of this state of 
society the individual only had a meaning in so 
far as he represented the collectivity to which he 
belonged. In other words, the ideal of the telos 
of life for early man was a social and not a 
personal ideal. This view continued more or 
less dominant during the earlier stages of civilisa- 
tion, and hence the ancient world generally is 
largely coloured by it. The former view, on the 
contrary, is most fully expressed in what are 
known as the great ethical religions, as well as in 
those various cults that arose in the later period 



3io THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

of ancient civilisation. Under the form of 
Christianity it has dominated western culture up 
to recent times and nominally does so still. 

But we see to-day another conception of the 
world-destiny gradually supplanting the indi- 
vidualist-introspective one. We see a new con- 
viction becoming stronger and manifesting itself, 
implicitly where not explicitly, in various ways. 
This view no longer finds the solution of the 
telos in a direct relation of the individual con- 
sciousness to a world-principle, but comes to 
regard it as realisable only as the resultant of 
a long process of social development, in which 
the individual as such plays a secondary role. 
With this conviction is connected a doubt as to 
the possibility of arriving at an adequate theo- 
retical formula for the summum bonum at all. 
The latter view, like the former, seems to us a 
sign of progress, for it is clear that to be able 
to state the world-purpose within the limits of 
any formula must imply the notion of finality as 
attaching thereto. But, as we have pointed out, 
happiness, if not per se the telos itself, is at least 
so per aliud, i.e. it must necessarily enter as 
integral element into any life-purpose or world- 
purpose considered as a concrete reality. Now 
happiness, to endure as happiness, we have seen, 
cannot be a finality ; it cannot be something fixed 
once for all and unchanging. What applies to 
happiness as element of the telos applies also to 
the telos itself, viewed as concrete, and to the 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 311 

Absolute, of which it may be conceived as the 
highest expression. 

Happiness, though not the whole purpose 
comprised in the telos, is nevertheless so integral 
a part of it that it may well be taken as the 
touchstone of progress, understanding thereby 
movement towards the telos. In this way hap- 
piness (pleasure) becomes practically identified 
with good, and its contrary unhappiness (pain) 
with evil, the first term being applied to all that 
makes for the telos and the second to all that 
hinders its realisation. In this connection we 
have found that there is a special dialectic of good 
and evil (pleasure and pain). All good or all 
evil that has become incarnate in the time-pro- 
cess, that has become particularised as this good 
thing or this evil thing, in so doing puts on the 
vesture of mortality. It makes its appearance 
with its own death-warrant written upon it. For 
it then belongs to the essence of the time-content. 
Now it is the deepest principle of the time-content 
that all that begins therein must also end therein ; 
what arises in time must also perish in time. 
" There is nothing that comes into being but 
ceases to be," says Heraklitos of Ephesus. But 
it might be said that, if realised good and realised 
evil are, by the very fact of their being realised, 
alike involved in the same condemnation, the 
best we can claim is that the one has no ad- 
vantage over the other. A nearer consideration 
of the process, however, shows us that this is not 



312 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

the case ; there is a difference between the two. 
As we have pointed out (pp. 242-246), concrete 
" evil " appears as the beginning or first term of a 
given cycle of the time-process, whilst the " good " 
appears as the termination, as the goal or com- 
pletion of the process. The "good" attained in 
the elimination or transformation of the specific 
"evil" discloses itself as the goal and purpose of 
the cycle in question. But if this be so, it is 
clear that all concrete "evil" issues in concrete 
"good" and not conversely. It is, nevertheless, 
further true that out of this realised "good" a 
new " evil," differing in character from the pre- 
vious one, begins soon to body itself forth. The 
new " evil " becomes realised itself, in its turn, 
as a definite evil thing (institution, &c). It 
becomes particularised and the same process 
begins anew. But each time that the " good " 
is realised and the "evil" eliminated or trans- 
formed there is a positive gain. In the moment 
of realisation there is a positive increment of 
"good" gained at the expense of "evil," of 
happiness at the expense of its opposite. 

The antithesis of " good " and " evil " lies deep 
down in the nature of reality itself, viewed in its 
Progres- pragmatic aspect, and, it would seem, 
sive ab- cannot be got rid of without abolish- 
oTtogieal m S re ality. The most we can predi- 
and cate as the result of our analysis is a 

alogieal. progressive approximation towards the 
"good." In the same way our analysis of the 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 313 

conditions of reality as knowledge leads us to 
postulate a progressive absorption or transfor- 
mation of the alogical by the logical, of matter 
by form, of the potential by the actual, without, 
nevertheless, our being able to conceive a point 
at which this process is completed — a point at 
which the alogical (or the material or the potential) 
element has vanished. As we have often said, 
the moment we have postulated this, we have 
left reality and sought refuge in an abstraction. 

We have, in the main and with one or two 
exceptions only, been concerned in the foregoing 
pages with a strictly scientific analysis of the 
conditions of the real, or, which is the same 
thing, of conscious experience potential and 
actual. There are, however, problems raised 
and indeed forced upon us by this very analysis 
that go beyond the analysis itself, and are essen- 
tially speculative in their character. 

Meanwhile, we may mention that the present 

work makes no pretension even to a complete 

analysis of all questions arising out of 

the conditions of reality themselves, tive differ- 

For example, the question of qualita- enee in 

,. rr r . ^ . , ^ , sensation, 
tive difference in sensation has scarcely 

been touched upon. This would naturally lead 

to a consideration of distinction of quality as 

obtaining in the alogical generally. Distinction 

of quality is the special formative aspect of the 

alogical per se. The alogical, e.g. as sensation, 

though in its relation to the total synthesis of 



314 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

reality it falls in general to the side of matter, 
just as the logical falls to the side of form, never- 
theless possesses per se in its character of simple 
element, a formal aspect. This is an interesting 
point and one well worthy of detailed elucidation. 
The differentiation of mere homogeneous sen- 
sation into the widest qualitative distinctions — 
distinctions that cannot be referred to any logi- 
cal relation, but are apparently inherent in the 
sense-element itself — is a significant subject, 
upon which, doubtless, much remains yet to 
be written. Similarly, there are many other 
questions, especially on the border-land be- 
tween psychology and theory of knowledge or 
metaphysic, which we have not dealt with or 
only lightly touched upon. Our object has 
been to offer suggestions for a future systematic 
philosophical construction and not to elaborate 
any completed system. 

One point, I think, the foregoing chapters 
have made clear, and that is not merely that 

Driving t ^ le a l°gi ca l nas a certain genetic 
force of priority over the logical, but that the 
alogieal. driving force of all process in reality 
resides in the alogieal — in sensation, in feeling, 
in will, and not in reason or pure thought- 
activity. In the actual course of evolution in 
time, though we find indeed, viewed in its 
broader issues, a progression according to law, 
yet the actual originating force of change in 
time we find in the spontaneity of the parti- 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 315 

cular. It was in the freak-individual that Darwin 
saw the prime factor in the differentiation of 
species. Again, in historical development, though 
we can discern certain categories or laws, under 
which social change takes place, when we view 
the matter abstractly, yet, taken in the concrete, 
the actual happening, and its initiation, is always 
due to the actions and passions of individuals 
and social groups. 

In dealing with the individual consciousness, 
it has been pointed out that there is no dis- 
continuity, no hiatus, between the fundamental 
conscious process presupposed in consciousness- 
in-general and this individual consciousness itself. 
Hence there is no hard and fast line dividing 
the several departments of philosophy from one 
another, e.g. metaphysics from theory of know- 
ledge (epistemology) or theory of knowledge 
from psychology (i.e. from psychology in its 
philosophical aspect, as opposed to psychology in 
its relation to physiology). In the same chapter 
(Chapter IV.) in which the individual conscious- 
ness is discussed, we have also considered the 
question at the basis of all Mysticism, and 
even of all ethical practice, namely, the reach- 
ing-out of the individual to a realisation of self 
outside the empirical self actually given. We 
have discussed this as regards the possible tran- 
scendence of the empirical self in a Divine per- 
sonality, and also, supposing any metaphysical 
hypothesis of this sort to be rejected, as un- 



316 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

satisfactory, we have dealt with the hypothesis 
of a transcendental-sociological entity as the 
objective of the realisability of the existing human 
personality. 

The highly important distinction between 
reality and truth has been sufficiently dealt 
with as throwing light on various problems of 
knowledge. The analysis of this leads up to a 
general discussion of the higher consciousness 
in its three aspects — philosophic, aesthetic, and 
ethical. The higher consciousness, as being 
concerned primarily with values, opens up a 
different world or, if one will, three worlds, 
all alike differing from the world which they 
presuppose and on which they are based, namely, 
the world of common-sense consciousness and 
of science, at least in its lower and more partial 
aspects. The value-judgment in all three worlds 
we have shown to have an alogical foundation, 
that is, it is based on something outside reason, 
outside thought and the processes of thought — 
it is based on immediacy, on apprehension, on 
the intuitiveness, the tkisness, of feeling, and on 
will-impulse — (feeling being static will, and will 
dynamic feeling). This applies even to that 
which, as a whole, is specially the realm of the 
logical, namely, philosophic truth. Even this 
presupposes axioms and postulates that reason 
is incapable of establishing, notwithstanding that 
it assumes them in all its operations as the mate- 
rial with which it works. Hence even truth 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 317 

is grounded in the alogical. Still more obvi- 
ously may this be seen in the case of aesthetic 
and ethical value-judgments, in all of which 
the alogical clearly predominates. By no ratio- 
cinative process can you prove a thing to be 
beautiful. Immediate feeling is the first and 
last court of appeal. You may, of course, for- 
mulate on the basis of this feeling canons of 
taste which serve to represent it in thought, 
and thus generalise it. In this way you may 
bring a certain logical consistency into the realm 
of aesthetic values, but the alogical asserts its 
primacy everywhere throughout the world of 
aesthetic judgment. 

In moral judgments the alogical root is, if 
anything, still more plain, but the alogical root 
in moral judgments is different from the alogical 
root in aesthetic judgments, as both are dis- 
parate from the pre-eminently logical value- 
judgments of philosophic truth. The aim of 
philosophy is to transmute the immediacy of 
reality into logical constructions or truths. The 
function of art is to transmute the pleasure- 
pain element in the perception of reality into 
what we call beauty, or, at least, into that 
which excites aesthetic emotion. The goal ol 
ethics is again the transmutation of conduct 
in accordance with a standard or ideal itself 
based on immediate feeling, and hence on 
the alogical, akin in some respects to the 
aesthetic value-standard, but totally alien to 



318 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

the philosophical. This last point is seldom 
recognised. 1 

We have asked the question what are the 
most comprehensive terms in which we can, 
if not define, at least indicate, the goal of 
reality and a fortiori of human life. Can this 

1 As illustration may be taken the following fact. In a historical 
work published some years ago by the present writer, an ethical 
judgment was ventured upon to the effect of describing Prince- 
Bishop Waldeck, on the ground of the barbarities committed on 
his fallen Anabaptist foes, as a " monster." In a criticism on the 
work in question, an evening organ of cultured Liberalism took the 
author to task for not recognising that it was " unphilosophical " 
to describe prince-bishops as monsters. The reviewer was evidently 
unaware of the naive crudity of his criticism. Apart from the fact 
that the same organ would probably have no philosophical scruples 
in stigmatising some bomb-throwing anarchist as a monster, the 
absurdity of expecting an ethical judgment to be philosophical 
needs no demonstration here. An ethical judgment, by the very 
fact of its being such, must necessarily be non-philosophical. 
Philosophy means, as we know, the reduction of reality to logical 
terms, while every ethical judgment, as such, is pre-eminently 
alogical. The attempt to make a philosophical judgment ethical, or 
an ethical judgment philosophical, is to misconceive entirely the 
meaning of both the one and the other. In ethics, as in aesthetics, 
the predominant note is alogical. Philosophy, in its judgments of 
actions, knows no praise or blame ; or if it praises or blames it 
does so merely, so to say, mechanically, as a cold corollary from 
certain rules with which it starts. Ethical judgments, on the other 
hand, are exclusively concerned with praise or blame as dictated by 
the alogical feeling-element in the ethical consciousness — indigna- 
tion, admiration, &c. To comment upon an ethical judgment, there- 
fore, that it is " unphilosophical " is to propound a truism. To 
reproach an ethical judgment for not being philosophical indicates 
a critic in the very last stage of muddle-headedness. Ethical 
judgments and philosophical judgments are doubtless alike ex- 
cellent things, but to blame one for not being the other is about as 
unreasonable as to blame a mastiff for not having the voice of a 
turtle-dove. 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 319 

enter the empirical consciousness in a flash of 
immediate feeling ? Is this, the solution of Mysti- 
cism, the right one ? Or can we learn 
anything concerning the telos by an T ^ e .^ elos 
analysis through reasoned reflection, of 
means, end, purpose, and happiness ? Or must 
we again accept the attitude of pure Scepticism or 
Agnosticism and renounce all attempt at any 
solution? To do so would seem like burking 
the most vital of all matters — that of the ultimate 
meaning and value of consciousness. If we do 
attempt to analyse the conditions of this problem, 
we are confronted with the questions how far 
all purpose is the exclusive appanage of an 
individual consciousness, of the relation of hap- 
piness to the telos, and of the possible nature 
of the telos generally. 

The groups of problems to which the con- 
sideration of the telos of human life and all 
existence, gives rise, have been already Telos 
discussed. It has been shown that moving 
in these ultimate questions of will and svntnesis « 
of feeling, human thought has been equally under 
the ban of hypostatised abstraction as in that of 
theory-of-knowledge and of metaphysic. It has 
been shown that the telos must be a synthesis 
and that not even its most salient element, not 
even happiness itself, as undetermined abstraction, 
represents the telos, conceived as realisable. The 
elucidation of this point has involved a criticism 
of the religious ideals of the world hitherto 



320 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

obtaining, as well as a criticism of Pessimism 
considered as a philosophical theory. The issue 
of this has been to show that Pessimism, no 
less than Optimism, implies an abstract and 
one-sided view of the dynamic of progress, a 
view, moreover, which professedly bases itself 
upon generalisations drawn from manifestly in- 
sufficient data. Reflection on the unfolding of 
reality in the time-series shows us a perpetual 
passing away of evil and a continuous realisation 
of good, and, although in a sense the converse 
is also true, yet there is an essential difference 
between the two cases, inasmuch as good, and 
not evil, constitutes the end of every dialectical 
cycle, through which the process of reality, con- 
sidered in its relation to good and evil, works. 
The complete attainment of a summum bonum, the 
exhaustion of all possibilities of the good in all or 
in any of its aspects in any realised now, must 
appear, in the light of our reflective conscious- 
ness, as a chimera. The infinite and eternal 
approximation to this, however, is no chimera, 
but an assumption involved in the self-con- 
sistency of consciousness itself. This infinite 
process, conceived as a realisation in time, 
cannot be regarded in any way as circular, as 
returning in upon itself. Its infinity is that of 
a forward movement. Each cycle may return 
up to a certain point upon itself, in so far as it 
obtains a richer content than it had at the 
beginning, a content upon a higher plane, but 



SURVEY OF RESULTS 321 

with the general movement, conceived as infinite, 

this is not the case. It is this alogical notion 

of infinity that gives us the only clue out of the 

labyrinth of the whence and the whither. 1 

If there be one thing that we must learn to 

give up, it is the notion of finality. Yet eternal 

process can never be formulated in „. 
11 t 1 1. .1 Final 

thought. It can be dimly appre- WO pd: ten- 

hended in feeling, that is all. The dential 

notion of direction, of tendency, must 

take the place of that of complete actualisation. 

Full realisation is not for us, even as ideal, in 

1 Cosmological theories of world-process often halt and become 
meaningless through a refusal to introduce the notion of infinity. 
Thus Herbert Spencer, like many other physicists, seems to have 
regarded the universe as a rounded-off whole in space, as a 
determinate sum of matter in motion. Then, again, in Spencer's 
conception, the great evolutionary process of this universe in 
time has a determinate beginning and a determinate ending, 
and thus, since it is finite in space, its infinity in time becomes 
merely formal, consisting in the never-ending recurrence of the 
same process, a process which, although its successive steps might 
take sons to accomplish themselves, nevertheless, as already said, 
has definite, and in a sense, absolute termina a quo and ad quem. 
This stagnation and somewhat banal result of the Spencerian cos- 
mology is only to be avoided by the assumption, to which, in the 
last resort, we are really driven by the necessities of thought, of an 
infinity of such world-systems in space, inter-connected with each 
other, corresponding to the diversity of bodies existing within each 
such system — systems occupying infinite space and evolving 
throughout eternal time. In this way, any process of evolution 
as given will never repeat itself merely, but will always be deter- 
mined by systems outside itself, just as, in our own cosmos, the 
evolution of individual bodies is determined by, and dependent on, 
the evolution of bodies outside themselves and in the last resort 
determined by the whole of the special cosmical system into 
which they enter. 

X 



322 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 

that stadium of consciousness in which we, finite 
individuals, with an animal-body basis, live, and 
move, and have our being. The suggestions 
given us by our higher consciousness, with its 
ideal values, of a "something beyond," must 
for us ever remain merely glimpses of possi- 
bilities, passing echoes, indicating direction. 
These should never seduce us into futile attempts 
at a dogmatic construction of the nature of the 
final goal of all things. So far as this goal is 
concerned, for us, at least, beyond these passing 
echoes, "the rest is silence." 



INDEX 



Absolute, the, 123 

as the highest expression of 

reality, 170 

as a final ens realissimum, 221 

of Professor Bradley, 264 

as something eternally complete, 

267, 268 
as merely principle, 269, 273, 

274 
Absolute thought, an, meaning of, 48 
Action, as directed by reason, 141, 

189 
Activity, the end of all, 190 
Actual, the, 27 

referable to the logical, 144 

Actual and potential, 143, 302 
Adjective and adjectival, Professor 

Bradley's use of the terms, 264 
/Esthetic consciousness, 168, 174, 199 

judgment, 317 

^Esthetics, the canon of, 197 
Agency, the infinite potentiality of 

mere, 87 
Agnosticism of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, 3 

as- popularly understood, 276 

Aims, dictated by feeling, 193 
Alogical, the, a primary element in 

all experience, 19 
— — a test of, 51 

particular, 63, 94 

in its media of space and time, 

86 

Hegel's view of, 105 

presuppositional value of, 156 

its priority of value over the 

logical, 157 

its distinction from "illogi- 
cality," 162 

the transformation in reflective 

thought, 305 

driving force of, 314 

Alogical and logical, the, 23, 58-103 
objections to the use of the 

terms, 96 



Alogical and logical, antithesis of, 
291 

Alogical elements, the determination 
of, per se, 263 

Alogical-material element, the, 155 

Animal body, the, 127 

Animal-human personality, only a 
means to an end, 130 

extra-individual possibilities in- 
herent in, 135 

Appearance, a sign of being, 74 

Appearance and being, the anti- 
thesis of, 70, 293 

" Appearance and Reality," Pro- 
fessor Bradley's, no 

Apperception, 10 

Apperceptive synthesis, the, n 

Apperceptive unifications, 42 

Aristotle, pallogism traceable in, 43 

his vovs ttoi7]tlk6s, 26, 154 

his 2Soy, 96 

his irpi!)T7] yM], 96, 144 

Art, the aim of, 173, 205 

the typal form in, 180 

the function of, 317 

Art consciousness, 181, 307 

Associational school, the, 20, 296, 297 

confusions of, 33 

their view of particularity, 66 

Atheism, as popularly understood, 
276 

Atheist, the, distinction between his 
point of view and that of the Theist, 
278 

Atom, the, n, 127 

" BEGRiFF"or " Idee," the, 26, 45,47 
Being, per se, 22 

meaning of, 50, 70 

the potential element of a thing, 

73 

implies infinity, 80 

Being and appearance, the antithesis 

of, 70, 293 
Berkeley, the famous formula of, 4 



324 



INDEX 



Bradley, Professor, his view of in- 
finity, 101 

his view of memory, no 

his rejection of the pallogistic 

theory of thought relations in vacuo, 

112 

his failure to recognise the philo- 
sophic value of the potential, 146 

special philosophical sense in 

which he uses the term "reality," 
150 

his "ego," "self," and "will," 

261 
his use of the terms ' ' adjective " 

and "adjectival," 264 

the absolute of, 264 

his views of time and space, 

275 
Brahminism, the goal of, 216 
Buchner, the position of, 284 
Buddhism, the goal of, 216 

Categories of Hegel, 5 
Categorisation, 10 
Category, the most exhaustive, 12 
Causation, the true inwardness of, 37 

its principle, 92 

its category, 137, 283 et seq. 

Cause and effect , the salient category 

of, 305 
Cell, the, 127 
Chance, the element of infinity in, 80 

how definable, 81 

• a positive principle in a series of 

events, 92 
Chance and law, antithesis between, 

78, 295 

equally positive elements of, 91 

Character, in itself, 173 

the measure of "goodness" in, 

173 

the moulding of, 185 

the categorised side of, 186 

Collective suggestion, the power of, 

134 
Common-sense, 12, 16 

consciousness, 106 

the truth of, 163 

Concept-form, always universal, 22 

the true distinguished from a 

false general concept, 23 

the hypostatisation of, 26 

Concreteness, 48 

Concrete consciousness, the adjunct 

of will, 206 

experiences, 8 

personality, 42 

world, the leading antitheses in, 

61 



Concrete events, irresolvable chance 

elements in, 88 
Condillac, the materialism of, 4 
Conduct, the pallogistic theory of, 

189 
Conscience, decisions of, 281 
Conscious experience, 40, 59, 97, 

274 

existence independent of, 288 

ultimate nature of, 289 

Conscious synthesis, the primordial, 

25 

immediacy, 27 

process, the continuity of, 104, 

300 

reality, 143 

Consciousness, Kant's, 5 

self-consistency of, 7 

the problem of, 10-38 

as opposed to unconsciousness, 

*3 

how the term is employed in 

philosophic writing, 15, 16 

the potentiality of, 24 

the matter and form of, 36 

synthetic movement of, 36 

the realisation of, 41 

ultimate elements of, 59 

the now or actual moment, 68, 

69 

individual, 108, 116, 122 

perse, 120 

the ultimate subject of, 125 

the progressive unfolding of, 

126 

the possibility of, 145 

the self-consistency of, 161, 271 

aim of, 174 

common psychological ground 

in the idealistic departments of, 
203 

ordinary empirical, 204 

the ultimate principle of, 261 

the empirical "centre " of, 262 

the subject of, 262, 266 

and duration, 274 

Consciousness-in-general, the prim- 
ordial synthesis of, 290 

Dialectical method, the dangers 

of, 38 
D'Holbach, systematic materialism 

of, 4 
Duration and consciousness, 274 

Ego, the, 26 

empirical, 28 

pure, 28, 29, 53 

personal, 35 



INDEX 



325 



Ego, attempts to eliminate it from 
philosophy, 51 

of Fichte, 57 

Professor Bradley's contention 

as to, 290 

eifSos, Aristotle's, 96 

Eighteenth century materialism, 3 

"Elements of Metaphysics," Pro- 
fessor A. E. Taylor's, 100 

Emotional satisfaction, 175 

Empirical centre of consciousness, 
the, 262 

ego, the, 28 

philosophers, the school of, 297 

(note) 

Empiricism, historical sketch of, 2 

postulates of, 2, 296 

pure philosophic, 3 

negative result of, 6 

Empiricist view of the external world, 

3 

Empiricists of the Associational 

school, 20 
End, an absolute, 212 
Erdmann, 26 (note) 
Esprit de corps, 135 
" Eternal glance," an, 79 
Ethical consciousness, 169, 307 

the aim of, 174 

antithesis of, 182 

judgment, 199, 317, 318 (note) 

Ethics, the true significance of, 130, 

131 

the goal of, 317 

Evil and good, the antithesis of, 236, 

241, 311 
Evil, transitory, 237 

the potentiality of, 238, 250 

concrete, 242 

the extinction of, 243, 244 

concrete realisation of, 244, 



312 



the element or principle of, 



245 



as concrete or in the abstract, 



280 
the perpetual passing away of, 

320 
Evolution, the true inwardness of, 37 
Evolutionary types, 127 
Existence, meaning of, 39, 293 

synonymous with reality, 71 

ceaseless movement of, 87 

Experience, 16 

ultimate factors of, 30 

conscious, 40 

the alogical element in, 43, 50 

Hegel's rejection of its material 

side, 49 



Experience, antithesis between the 
aloglical and logical elements in, 
60 

External universe, the, 33, 106 

Extra-consciousness, 72, 294 

Fechner, his theory of physical 

parallelism, 284 
Feeling, how related to the subject of 

consciousness, 30 

the material of thought, 142 

impossibility to interpret it in 

terms of thought, 147 

the ultimate arbiter of action, 

189 et seq. 

the nationalisation of, 192 

the driving force in, 314 

" Feltness," the element of, 21, 24 

a modification of " I," 36 

what is presupposed by, 121 

Fichte, 5 

the "Anstoss" of, 25, 30 

his "ego," 57 

Final goal of all things, the, 206-253 
Finality, impossibility of the notion 

of, 268, 321 
Form, referable to the logical, 144 
presupposes matter to be in- 
formed, 147 
Form and matter, the antithesis of, 

143 
Freedom and necessity, the antithesis 

of, 182, 196 
French school, the, materialism of, 4, 

284 
Future, the, as time and mode, 69 

German classical philosophy, the 

great achievement of, 39 
God, a gratuitous hypothesis, 125 
Good, in the empirical and relative 

sense, 238 
its absolute triumph over evil, 

246, 320 
Good and evil, the antithesis of, 236, 

311 

as measured by pleasure and 

pain, 241 

concrete, 242 

Green, Thomas Hill, 25, 44 

pallogistic Hegelianism of, 267 

Hackel, his postulate as to the 
ultimate source of brain changes, 

"5 

postulates a rudimentary psychic 

side to molecules and atoms, 128 
Haldane, R. B. , 25 
Happiness, 190 



326 



INDEX 



Happiness, an essential element in 
the telos of all activity, 195 

an absolutely perfect, 210 

in itself only an element in life's 

goal, 211, 247 

a mere abstraction, 213 

as member of a synthesis, 213 

qualitative changes in, 225 

terms in which it can be ex- 
pressed, 228 

as an element in the telos of life, 

310 
Hegel, his categories, 5 

his unique place in the history 

of thought, 6 

his development of pallogism, 

43, 46, 302 {note) 

his view of reality, 44 

meaning of his "Begriff" or 

"Idee," 26, 47, 154 

the apostle of thought-form, 57 

leading categories of his logic, 

64 

his distinction between proper 

and false infinite, 99 

Hegelian dialectic, the, contradiction 

of, 162 

system, the, formation of, 26 

school, the modern English, 49 

logic, the leading categories of, 

64 

trichotomy, 153 

Hegelianism, orthodox, 25 
Helvetius, the materialism of, 4 
Herbart, his reaction against Hegel's 

pallogism, 44 
Higher consciousness, the, 174-205 

concerned with values rather 

than facts, 178 

the three aspects of, 316 

the suggestions given to us by, 

322 

Historical religions, the ethical theory 
of, 248, 249 

Hobbes, the empiricism of, 4 

Human culture, problem of, 178 

branches of, 178 

the main task of, 308 

" Human Personality and its Sur- 
vival of Bodily Death," 114 

Human progress, 232, 242 

Human society, 128 

Humanism, 246 

Hume, his view of the soul or mind, 4 

the validity of his impressions, 5 

his " impressions " and " ideas," 

297 

Hypnotism, results obtained by in- 
vestigators of, 301 



" I," the word, as used in common 

language, 109 
the nearest approach to Aris- 
totelian " pure matter," 145 
Ideal, popular use of the word, 41 
Ideals, our, the nature of, 223 

of various religious systems, 215 

Idealism, the main position of, 7 

modern, 33, 39-57 

the argument for, 120 

modern, principle at the basis 

of, 288 

so-called refutations of, 288 

(note) 

Ideas, 33 

" Idee," Hegel's theory of, 26, 47 

as the highest form of the logical, 

45 

Illogicality, 162 

Illusory appearance, 75 

Impulse, 194 

blind, 196 

Individual, the significance of in con- 
nection with the final goal, 217, 
218, 228, 229 

the self-centered, 255 

meaning of the word, 255 

Individual consciousness, 104-142, 
315 

defined, 108 

not immortal, 115 

as deduced by philosophy, 118 

distinction between it and the 

universal synthesis of conscious- 
ness, 122 

the meaning of per se, 139 

as representing a definite stage 

in the order of physical evolution, 
228 

Individual interest, its identification 
with social interest, 220 

personality, the telos of, 130 

will, the doubleness of, 196 

Individuality, 255 

Individuation, the principle of, 31 

Infinite, the, assumption of, 99 

essential nature of, 99 

proper and false, 99 

popular notion of, 101 

an attribute of the alogical aspect 

of experience, 102 

Infinite and finite, the antithesis of, 
76, 294 

Infinity, what is implied by, 79 

a complete knowledge of impos- 
sible, 93 

a. parte ante and a parte post, 94 

Infiuxus psychicus, 283, 285 

Instinct and reason, 61 



INDEX 



327 



Intellectual ism, 168 

Intellectual progress, the enemy to, 

178 
Introspective religions, individual 

personality, the ideal of, 215 

Jaures, his " moi premier eteternel," 

136 
his view of time and space, 275 

Kant, his "consciousness," 5 

his ' ' object of the internal 

sense," 32 

his ' ' original unity of appercep- 
tion," 35 

his view of " time and space,' 

65, 67 

his view of reality, 148 

one of the first to indicate the 

true nature of the antinomy of 
freedom and necessity, 196 

his theory of the doubleness of 

the individual will, 196 

his sensus communis, 203 

Knowing, the eternal possibility of, 

49 
Knowledge, the ultimate subject of, 

24, 28 

the potentiality of, 122 

the world of, 209 

La Mettrie, systematic materialism 

of, 4 
Language, the expression of, 23, 132 
— — dependence of the perfect 

emergence of the self-conscious 

personality on, 133 
social in its inception and aim, 

133 
Law, the essence of a true, 90 
Law and chance, equally positive 

elements of, 91 

antithesis between, 78, 295 

Lewes, H. G., 288 (note) 

Life, apart from living matter, 156 

the goal of, 207, 308, 319 

insolubility of the problem, 208 

new conception of, 217 

not attainable by personal will, 

217 

viewed as synthesis, 221 

not attainable by the individual, 

qua individual, 248 

happiness as an element in, 310 

Locke, his views of matter, 3 

his empiricism, 4 

Logical, the, and alogical, 23 

the forms of, 63 

the function of, 87 



Logical, the limit of, 177 
Logical-formal element, the, 155 
Logical universal, 65 
a mere form, 144 

Manifold, the, reduction of to 

unity, 11 
Material and formal, the, 302 
Materialism of the eighteenth 

century, 3 

and sensation, 4 

the older, 284 

Material world, the, 35 
Mathematical science, the sphere 

of, 95 
Matter, primary and secondary 

qualities of, 3 

in motion, 11 

the potential factor, 65 

referable to the alogical, 144, 

145 
Memory, Professor Bradley's basis 

of, no 
Memory synthesis, the, 32 
Mental concept, as distinguished 

from perception, 297 
Mental world, the, 35 
Mentation, modern science's view of, 

"5 

Metaphysic, no opposition between 
its conclusions and those of 
science, 17 

an inquiry into the truest signi- 
ficance of reality, 18 

the central truth established by, 

35 

the generalisations of, 180 

the problem of, 254-286 

Metaphysics, the test of, 201 
Modern idealism, 33, 39-57 

the standpoint of, 47 

materialists, 128 

Molecule, the, 127 

Moleshott, the position of, 284 

Monism, 260 

Moore, G. E., his " Refutation of 

Idealism," 288 (note) 
Moral actions, elements in, 186, 187 

problem, the, 281, 282 

Music, transcendence of the particular 

in, 180 
Myers, Mr., his view of the soul, 114 
" Myself," 32 
Mysticism, historical ideals of, 215 

Neo-Schopenhauerianism, 206 
Nineteenth century agnosticism, 3 
Nous iroi7)TLK6$, Aristotle's, 26, 154 
Numerical infinity, 99 



328 



INDEX 



Object, the, basis of its reality, 

71 
metaphorically deducible from 

the subject, 155 

the raison d'etre of, 156 

Object-world, the, 29, 54 
Objective reference, 25 

thought-relations, 33 

Objectivity, salient categories of, 31 

Optimism, 320 

" Organic irritability," 132 

Pain, 240 
Pallogism, 26 

traceable in Aristotle, Plato, 

and Spinoza, 43 

its capacity to establish its 

position, 88 

- — its position with regard to con- 
sciousness, 123 

the tendency of, 146 (note) 

its attitude towards reality, 153 

the theory of, 295 

Pallogistic juggle, the, 50 

Particular, the, the mystery of, 254 

the character of, 291 

Particular and universal, the anti- 
thesis between, 61, 179 

Particularity, the modes of, 63, 67 

the potential factor of matter, 

65 

Plato's idea of, 66 

Past, the, as time-mode, 68 
"Pathway of Reality," Haldane's, 

"5 

Perception, as distinguished from 

mental concepts, 297 
Perception and reflection, 20 
Perceptibility, 145 (note) 
Personal ego, the, 35 

identity, in, 112 

consciousness, 216 

interest, 249 

Personality, 139, 140 

use of the word, 301 

Pessimism, 224, 320 

fallacies of, 225-233 

Phenomena, the dual aspect of, 283 
Philosophic consciousness, the aim 

of, 174 
Philosophic judgment, 316 
Philosophic reflection, 202 

theism, 40, 275 

truth, the canon of, 198 

Philosophical analysis, results of, 7 

problem, the, crux of, 16 

terminology, the aim of, 177 

Philosophy, as ultima ratio, 18 
how to be regarded, 13 



Philosophy, what it does, 34 

aim and task of, 36, 37, 58, 166, 

172, 175, 178, 205, 317 

definition of, 176 

logical generalisation of, 181 

Philosophy and metaphysic, function 

of, 36 
Philosophy and poetry, analogy 

between, 177 
Physical science, limitations of, 12 
Physical substance, 293 
Physico-psychical life, the final goal 

of, 126 
Physiological psychology, 108 
Plato, pallogism traceable in, 43 
his adumbration of Kant's view 

of time and space, 65 

his idea of particularity, 66 

his universalia ante rem, 155 

his intellectualism, 168 

Pleasure, in the last resort, 190 
the distinction of quality in, 

227 

viewed abstractedly, 238, 239 

Pluralism, 259 

Popular scientific criticism, fallacies 

of, 54 
Potential, referable to the alogical, 

144 
the true philosophic value of, 

146 
Potential and actual, the terms, 96 
Pragmatism, 206, 246 
Praise and blame, the antithesis of, 

185 

basis and test of, 188 

Primitive man, his views of con- 
sciousness, 117 

the ideal of, 215, 248 

Primitive society, the basis of, 135 

Probabilities, the theory of, 88, 90 

irpdrrr; 7X7/, Aristotle's, 96, 144 

Pseudo-concepts, 176 

Psychology, the alogical and logical 
in, 141 

the feeling of, 141 

Psycho-physical parallelism, 283 

"Pure being," 22 

Purpose, the origin of, 192 

meaning of, 209 

the world of, 209 

Rationality, subordinate to feeling, 

189, 190 
Real, popular use of the word, 41 
Reality, synonymous with conscious 

experience, 7, 19, 119 

in its ultimate expression, 8 

as external object, 19 



INDEX 



3 2 9 



Reality, the ordinary man's difficulty 

in understanding its meaning, 34 
ultimate nature of, 36 

what it must mean, 39, 169, 

170 

Hegel's view of, 44 

Hegel's basis of, 45 

when analysed, 48 

alogical elements of, 48, 166, 

3°5 

constitution of, 70 

of an object, 74 

as system, 75 

law and chance in, 91 

irreducible chance element in, 

98 _ 

ultimate problem of, 115 

in the popular sense, 148, 149 

as opposed to abstraction, 148 

{note) 

in a philosophical sense, 150, 

degrees in, 151 

pallogistic attitude towards, 153 

analysed by Hegelian tricho- 
tomy, 157 

concrete, 158 

transformation of into the terms 

of its own reflective consciousness, 

I7S 

resolution of into a system of 

postulates, 206 

neither mere end nor means, 

207 

general problem of, 209 

■ ultimate goal of, 247 

where found, 250 

impossibility of gaining a com- 
plete knowledge of its individual 
aspect, 255, 256 

in a sense individual, 255 

higher meaning of, 272 

three chief senses in which it is 

used, 304 

various values of, 307 

antithesis of good and evil in, 

312 

Reality and truth, 143-173 

distinction between, 316 

Real world, the, what is meant by, 

35 
Reason, impotence of the categories 
to deal with the purely alogical, 

137 

the handmaid of feeling, 157 

the means to the end, 191 

as opposed to feeling, 193, 

194 
Reason and impulse, 189 



Reason and will, 141 

Reflective consciousness, the opera- 
tion of, 50, 169 

Reflective thought, relation of to 
feeling, 147 

the alogical in, 305 

"Refutation of Idealism," G. E. 
Moore's, 288 (note) 

Religious consciousness, introspective 
form of, 130, 308 (note) 

Royce, Professor, his "The World 
and the Individual," 99 

his " self-representative system," 

100, 269, 295 

fundamental defect in his reason- 
ing, 100 

Schelling, his infinite impulse 

towards an end, 49 

his "ego," 57 

Scholastic nominalists, 20 
Schopenhauer, his counterblast to 

Hegel's pallogism, 44 
his infinite impulse towards an 

end, 49 
justified in terming the pure 

subject " will," 53 

his "ego," 57 

senses in which he uses the word 

"will," 195 
one of the first to indicate the 

true nature of the antimony 

between freedom and necessity, 

196 
his deduction of art from meta- 
physical will, 204 
Science, the materialistic standpoint 

of, 17 
Scientific outlook on the world, the, 

181 
Scientific thought, the aim of, 205 
Self, the higher ideal, 132 
Self-conscious personality, conditions 

of, 136 
Self-identity, per se, 139, 301 
Self-interest and social interest, 188 
Self-object, the, 28 
Self-reference, the " I " of, 30 
Self-sacrifice, in religious systems, 

219 

as an end in itself, 230 

Self-satisfaction, as a goal, 211, 

212 
Sensation and materialism, 4 
primary antithesis of to thought, 

61 

qualities of, 263, 313 

driving force in, 314 

Sense, the matter of, 62 



33Q 



INDEX 



Sense-manifold, 62 

Sense quality, the alogical element 

of, 51 
Sense-particular, 65 

of the Empiricists, 299 

Sense-residuum, an abstraction of 

thought element, 21 
Sensible quality, its debt to language, 

133 
Social development, stages of, 248 
Social-human personality, 129 

its process of realisation, 131 

Solipsism, the position of, 15 
Soul, the, animistic notion of, 113 

Mr. Myers' view of, 114 

Space and time, problems of, 103 
Spencer, Herbert, his formula of the 

" inconceivability of the opposite," 

7 

a cardinal position of his system, 

128 

his view of the universe, 321 

Spinoza, pallogism traceable in, 43 

his unica substantia, 154 

his intellectualism, 168 

his ideal man, 189 

Stoics, the, 189 

Subject, the, 155 

without object, 28 

■ created by " Idee," 45 

as ultimate principle of con- 
sciousness, 261 

Subject and object, 34, 59 

Subjectivity, the principle of, 71, 293 

Summum bonum, the, 212 

elements of, 214 

happiness as a factor in, 247 

impossibility of envisaging, 251 

the complete attainment of, 320 

Supreme Being of ordinary theology, 
the, 101 

Taste, the canon of, 197 

Taylor, Professor A. E. , his "Ele- 
ments of Metaphysics," 100 

Theism, the question of, 208 

as popularly understood, 276 

Theist, the distinction between his 
point of view and that of the 
atheist, 278 

Thelemist, the, fallacy of, 207 

"Things," 33 

" Things-in-themselves," the philo- 
sophical theory of, 159 

Thinking, a negation of infinity, 93 

Thought, relations struck out by, 22 

per se, 23 

apperceptive activity of, 27, 76, 

183 



Thought, what it is, 36 

the postulate of, 48, 121 

the material of, 142 

Thought and being, the gulf between, 
24 

and thing, opposition between, 

18 

Thought-form, alogical factors pre- 
supposed by, 42 

Hegel, the apostle of, 57 

a salient point of, 175 

Thought-relation, presupposes rela- 
tive terms, 147 

in vacuo, 112 

Time, modes of, 67 

ultimateness of, 274 

Time and space, 65 

" Transcendental Analytic," the, 
Kantian categories of, 64 

Transcendental sociology, 130 

Truth and reality, 77, 158 

Truth, abstract, 158 

various senses of, 160, 163 

ultimate test of, 161, 171, 271, 

287 

gradations of, 162, 171 

absolute and relative, 163, 167 . 

— — special, 163 

scientific sense of, 164 

essence of, 165 

of philosophy, 166, 167 

Unconscious, the, 13, 294 

" Unconscious perception," 145 (note) 

Unconsciousness, 72 

Unica Substantia, Spinoza's, 154 

Unity, self-realising, 283 

Unity of apperception, Kant's 

original, 35 
Universal, the, a formal unity, 63 

its inability to penetrate the 

particular, 177 

character of, 292 

as class-name, 306 

" Universal individual," the, 119 
Universe, the, existence of as con- 
scious experience, 47 
Universal and particular, the, 22 
Universalia ante rem, the Platonic, 

ISS 
Ultimate and proximate ends, 193 
Ultimate subject, the, 35, 265 

Vogt, the position of, 284 

Ward, Professor James, 10, 62 

his destructive criticism of the 

doctrine of psycho-physical paral- 
lelism, 285 



INDEX 



I3i 



Wells, H. G., on the self-centred 
uniqueness of the individual, 255 

Will, 54, 157 

spontaneity in the act of, 185 

senses in which used by Scho- 
penhauer and in popular discourse, 

195 

in general, 196 

ultimate and subordinate ends 

of, 197 



Will, as element in every conscious 

reality, 206 

driving force in, 314 

Will and reason, 141 

"World," the, a system of possible 

experiences, 15 

as numerical infinity, 31 

scientific outlook on, 181 

"World and the Individual, The," 

Professor Royce's, 99 



Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co, 
Edinburgh <5r* London 



n 



FEB S3 1908 



